Pawarumi

From Shmups Wiki -- The Digital Library of Shooting Games
Revision as of 10:56, 11 May 2021 by Hook (talk | contribs) (→‎Nintendo Switch: After more staring at the screen and talking with the dev, finally got the JoyFul colourscheme right!)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

⚠️ work in progress ⚠️

Pawarumi.png
Pawarumi
PawarumiSwitch.png

Switch Definitive Edition Cover

Developer: Manufacture 43
Official site: Pawarumi
Music: Grégory Desmurs[1]
Program: Daniel Borges[2]
Art: Alexandre Lutz
Charles Vernier
Alexandre Chaudret[2]
Release date: Steam: Jan 30th, 2018 (Manufacture 43)[3]

Xbox: July 7th, 2019 (Manufacture 43)[4]

Switch:
eShop: July 7th, 2019 (Manufacture 43)[5]
Physical: December 11th, 2020 (Eastasiasoft)[6]

PS4:
America: February 11th, 2020 (Manufacture 43)[7]
Asia/Japan: February 13th, 2020 (Eastasiasoft)[8]
Physical: February 14th, 2020 (Eastasiasoft) [9]
Europe: June 25th, 2020 (Manufacture 43) [10]

Pawarumi is a (horizontally displayed) vertical shooting game in a sci-fi setting with pre-Columbian culture influences. It was developed and published by Manufacture 43 in 2018. It was ported to the Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PS4 in 2019.

The game tells the story of Axo, best pilot of the planet, redeeming herself from exactions perpetuated under alien influence. Her ship, Chukaru, is the only Earth one capable of mixing the energies of the Condor, the Jaguar and the Serpent gods. By a rock-paper-scissor like mechanic, firing one of its 3 weapons, depending on the type of enemy hit, will either charge its super attack, cure its shield or maximize damage.

Gameplay Overview

Basics

There are no lives or continues/extends in Pawarumi, only a bar depicting the amount of shield available, which can be recovered at any time by using the Boost mechanic. This also means that every run will automatically be a 1CC.

When hit, the shield depletes by a third.

Basic Weapons
Serpent Gatling Condor Laser Jaguar Missiles

Pawarumi's Serpent Gatling Gun

Pawarumi's Condor Laser

Pawarumi's Jaguar Missiles

Trinity Mechanic

Contrary to many shoot’em ups, Pawarumi doesn’t have any items to pick up and make your weapons progress, they are at their maximum potential right from the start. It features a game mechanic called Trinity: the three basic weapons are powered by three divinities: Condor (blue), Serpent (green) and Jaguar (red). Enemies are powered by those same divinities (colors). The interaction between a weapon hit and an enemy triggers one of the three bonuses of the Trinity: Boost, Drain & Crush.

Color Matching Animation
Boost

It cures the shield AND the enemy hit will shoot slightly faster. (x1.25 in discovery mode, x1.5 in normal mode, x2 in heroic mode)

Drain

It will transform enemies’ pain into energy to progressively charge each level of the Super Attack.

Crush

It will multiply the damages inflicted to enemies by a factor of x1.5.

Super Attack

The Super Attack charges up through Drain, and can stack up to to 3 levels. Each level fires more projectiles that go even faster.

When triggered it deplets all of the gathered super power and its effect is a mix between a hyper and a bullet-clearing bomb: within the circle around the ship, enemy bullets are cleared, and powerful homing projectiles fire to all directions. Projectiles are able to hit several times.

A counter appears up above the ship exponentially growing when each projectile hits. A special bonus is awarded based on the final value of that counter.

Super Attack

Controls

The game is designed for analog gamepads but attention has been paid for it to be also played with arcade sticks. The movement of the ship is analog (no inertia!), very fine and precise movement can be achieved with the joystick. Three buttons fire the three main weapons, a fourth one fires the super attack, and the last fifth one, "brake", halves the speed of the ship.

Default configuration
Action Keyboard Xbox Gamepad Switch PS4
Movement Up/Down/Left/Right Joystick/D-Pad Left Stick/D-Pad Left Stick/D-Pad
Blue Condor Laser W X (blue) Y Square
Green Serpent Gatling X A (green) B Cross
Red Jaguar Missiles C B (red) A Circle
Super Attack Space bar Y (yellow) X Triangle
Brake Left Shift LT (left trigger) ZL (left trigger) L2

Button assignments are reconfigurable in the options.

Difficulties

The game has three difficulty settings: Discovery, Normal and Heroic. Each one plays the story slightly differently with the orders of the levels changed. Only Normal and Heroic enable access to the last level, K-7Z4-C04TL. Only by playing in Heroic mode can the final boss be truly defeated.

Level Order
Discovery Normal Heroic
Alaska Alaska Alaska
Dune Ocean Industrial Complex Xibalba
Industrial Complex Xibalba Dune Ocean
Xibalba Dune Ocean Industrial Complex
K-7Z4-C0A7L K-7Z4-C0A7L

Story

The story varies a bit depending on the difficulty taken – the stages (and therefore story sequences) are in different order, and the last stage is only accessible on the higher two difficulties, with the true ending only on the highest difficulty.

Alaska Secret Base class T.I.K.A.L

Alaska

Dune Ocean of Cha-Ni

Dune Ocean

Xibalba: Doors of the Underworld

Xibalba

Itzamatul Industrial Complex

Industrial Complex

Astral Sector K-7Z4-C04TL

K-7Z4-C04TL

Scoring

The total number of points awarded by an enemy at the moment of its destruction can be displayed by turning on the "display points" in the game section of the options of the game.

Damage Points

Hitting any enemy will give you points proportionally to the damage done. An extra 25 points are awarded when using Drain on an enemy and 200 extra points when using Boost on an enemy.

Destruction Points

Destroying an enemy will reward you with additionnal points depending on how strong the enemy was.

Crush Bonus

Destroying an enemy with a Crush weapon will multiply the destruction points by six!

Super Attack

When the Super Attack is triggered a combo counter is shown on top of the ship. It raises faster with many or very strong enemies. Each combo hit will reward with 2674 points.

General tips

Combine Damage Bonus and Crush Bonus by quickly changing to a Crush weapon just before destroying an enemy.


??? Provide some example calculaton ???

Strategy

Achievements

Console Releases

Xbox One

Released on July 7th, 2019, it runs at 1080p on Xbox One and 4K on Xbox One X.

Nintendo Switch

Released on July 7th, 2019 with a day-one patch, it was locked to 30FPS with a quite some input lag and worse performance in TV mode than handheld. The version features an exclusive alternate ship coloring (named JoyFul) that depends on the Joy-Cons used to play the game. The colours of the attached Joy-Cons so that the player decides which one takes on the colour of the extremities, while the other slightly tints the darker parts of the ship. In all cases the pod continues to glow in the colour of the active weapon.

Chukaru while playing with Neon Green-Pink Joy-Con

A patch was released a year later on June 1st, 2020 fixing the performance issues and unlocking the framerate to 60FPS in both handheld (720p) and TV mode (1080p) with dynamic resolution for the toughest parts of the game. The patch also added offline achievements to the Switch version, with an artwork gallery, and access to the alternate ship was simplified. It was also added the possibility to swap the effect of the joy-cons on the colors of the alternate ship.

Playstation 4

Released on February 11th, 2020, it runs at 1080p on PS4 and 1440p on PS4 Pro. The light bar of the Dualshock 4 changes color depending on which weapon is being used and flashes red on low shield energy. This feature is also enabled on PC when playing with that controller.

Physical Releases

PC

Only available to Kickstarter backers, it released in a triptych digipack with manual and ex-libris cards of the artworks of Alexandre Chaudret with bright highlights. It was sent to backers on August 2019. It includes executables for Windows, macOS and Linux.

Playstation 4

Released on February 14th, 2020 courtesy of Eastasiasoft through Play-Asia, it was limited to 2000 copies. Marked as "Limited Edition", the box includes a regular PS4 blu-ray with a manual in a regular PS4 plastic case and a CD with the soundtrack.

Nintendo Switch

Released on December 11th, 2020 again courtesy of Eastasiasoft through Play-Asia, it was released both as a limited edition of which 2000 copies have been produced and as a regular edition which the number of copies printed is unknown. The limited edition is similar to the PS4 edition as it contains an additional soundtrack CD. The regular edition is a regular Switch plastic case with a manual. Both are marked "Definitive Edition" as they already include all the patches of the eShop version.

Development

The game was developed by a small team of French Indie developers based in Bordeaux. The game uses the Unity3D game engine, FMOD sound system and Rewired to support a wide range of controllers.

It was kickstarted in April 2017. [11], received financial support from the CNC (Centre National du Cinéma)[12] and Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine.

References & Contributions