Eden's Aegis

Eden's Aegis

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Eden's Aegis

Start Screen

Developer:	x.x
Official site:	https://xxgameroom.itch.io/edens-aegis
Release date:	PC Jan 6th, 2010
Previous game:	Blue Wish Resurrection Plus
Next game:	Blue Wish Desire

General Information

Eden's Aegis is the 6th game by x.x Game Room, is [Free to Play|Free To Play] and the 2nd installment in the Eden's Edge series. Like the developer's other games, it is a 2D shmup with heavy inspiration from CAVE's development and game design style. Eden's Aegis combines many ideas from a variety of games such as Mushihimesama, Espgaluda/ ESP_Ra.De., and the Touhou series by ZUN (or a magical girl + fantasy sort of style in general). It is available for Windows PCs and is compatible with Windows 10.

The game has 3 difficulty modes and a total of 4 characters to choose from (2 needing to be unlocked via clearing the game multiple times), each with unique shot types and abilities. The key mechanic in Eden's Aegis is a special shot that each character has. By consuming a meter (that refills after a short time), the player can unleash an additional volley of bullets at enemies, dealing extra damage. However, defeating enemies under the effects of this special attack will cause all bullets shot from that enemy to cancel and award bonus score items. Utilizing ability skillfully is crucial to success.

The game was officially released to itch.io on January 6th, 2010, however development of the game dates back as far as June 30th, 2008, according to the update notes provided in the game's Read_Me.txt file. The current version of the game is version 1.11, having been updated some time after version 1.10, which is dated in the same file at May 5th, 2010 (ver.1.11 is not noted/dated in the changelog).

Reviews of the game on its store page are positive, with players generally regarding it as a fun STG to play.

Gameplay Overview

Controls

Button	Action
Arrow Keys	Move
Z	Shot
Hold Z	Focused Shot
X	Bomb
C	Special
A	Auto-Fire
S	Pause
Escape	Quit Game

Note: Pausing during a run at any point will disable high score and replay saving!

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Characters/Shot Types

WIP

Character	Shot Type	Bomb	Special
Nanathy	Wide Shot with Medium damage	Large Star Explosion AoE	Homing Stars with Medium Damage
Maple	Narrow Shot with High damage	Radial Bullet Flurry AoE	Narrow Blue Fireballs with Average Damage. Will slightly tilt to the side if holding a direction
Eve	Wide Shot with Low Damage, but has options that follow the path of the player (and will move into a narrow shot formation for focused shot, but move back when released)	Burst of fast, very wide bullets	Very Wide Bullet Fan with Low Damage (High Damage if point blank)
Ridmie	Narrow Pulsing Shot with Medium damage	???WIP	Short Range Blade with Very High damage

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Scoring

Items

Scoring revolves around chaining, by defeating enemies and collecting score items. Defeating enemies as they are hit with your special shot will cause them to cancel all of their bullets on screen, converting the bullets into score items. Score items increase in value as they are collected, however will decrease in value if not collected fast enough. Thus must be chained in sequence. There is also a hidden chain that increases the value gained from defeating enemies. It is reset to zero, along with your item chain, upon losing a life. Thus a No Miss of the game is ideal for scoring as well. Bombing also can hurt your score, as during a bomb you cannot use Special or Shot. As bombs also cancel all bullets on the screen, you canot convert bullets to item while one is active anyways. Similarly being hit with Auto-Guard will consume a bomb and also cancel bullets on the screen briefly. during the short recovery time, you also will not be able to fire, which can also lose out on some score or decrease your chain.

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Strategy

Extends

Score Extends
1st	2nd
7,000,000	30,000,000

There is also an additional 1-UP item on Stage 4 during the mid-boss, on the right side of the screen. Attacking it with your special shot will release it.

Survival

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The game is relatively beginner friendly for survival play! Using the settings Guard ON, Wait ON will help greatly with achieving an All Clear. Guard ON will allow you to take extra hits, at the cost of only 1 bomb each. This effectively quadruples your starting lives without having to worry about manually bombing preemptively when in danger. Likewise, Wait ON will cause slowdown to occur when there are many bullets on the screen, which can make dodging dense patterns easier as well.

Holding Shot + Special can ensure a stream of increased constant damage overall, which can also aid in survival play. Once comfortable with a stage layout, you can also time using your special shot on large enemies, or during particularly difficult sections, in order to also get bullet cancels to clear the screen. Most bullet patterns are either aimed or static, so tap dodging will get you far.

Likewise, focusing on lightly scoring and playing for No Miss during the early stages can ensure you reach both score extends, giving you additional resources to work with. With Auto-Guard, you should have plenty of resources to clear the game with. Using Bombs to deal with difficult stage sections or end boss patterns faster (instead of relying on multiple Auto-Guard protections) can also be helpful.

Scoring

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Scoring the game is a bit more complex, but your goal should be to create as many large bullet cancels as possible, without dropping your item chain too much.

As noted in the Scoring section of this page, there are two counters to be aware of. For clarity, these will be referred to as Item Counter and Overall Counter.

Item Counter

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The Item Counter is the counter visible in the top left corner of the screen that counts up as you collect score items, and decreases rapidly when not collecting items after a short period of time (similar to DoDonPachi's Hit Counter). Defeating enemies quickly with Special Shot (or just regular shot in a short window after they are hit by a Special Shot bullet, while their lifebar is blue) will also cancel all bullets from that enemy on the screen. This is usefulf or survival, but for scoring, delaying destroying enemies will actually allow you to collect much more items than if you were to defeat them normally. Additionally, any enemy defeated in this manner will also have their items auto-collect to you, from anywhere on the screen.

The higher the Item Counter, the more score is awarded per item pickup and per enemy destroyed, so maintaining your chain high is important.

Additionally, defeating bosses quickly is important too, so utilizing your Shot and Special to deal extra damage quicker is vital. The Item Counter decreases slower during boss fights, but you still want to reach each phase transition as fast as possible, and collect a bullet cancel from those as well using Special.

Overall Counter

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The Overall Counter is a hidden counter not displayed to the player, besides the yellow numbers shown when defeating enemies that increases over time. This counter is influenced by the Item Counter. Collecting items and defeating enemies increases this counter at the same rate, however unlike the Item Counter which resets at the end of each stage, the Overall Counter carries over into the next stage.

Both counters will be reset to zero upon losing a life, thus survival is crucial to high scoring. However as the later stages have much more bullets and enemies, if you are to lose a life, it is better for it to happen early in the game, rather than later. Losing lives in the middle of the game, such as Stage 3, can greatly impact scoring due to the nature of the combo chaining system.

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References and Contributors

Eden's Aegis itch.io page:
https://xxgameroom.itch.io/edens-aegis

x.x GameRoom's (Developer's) itch.io Page of all their works:
https://xxgameroom.itch.io/

Contributors:
Xeirla