Quagmire’s Kingdom's preview of Duailty ZF.

I have to share an amazing piece of video game journalism.  It's not often you read a review, preview in this case, where the reviewer just "gets it" and understands where the game developer is coming from and heading.  David Collins breaks the mold when he "gets" what we at Xona Games have done with Duality ZF, our upcoming Xbox LIVE shoot'em up.  I am amazed at his effort to understand who we are and what we are about.

Some clips from the article:

So, how do you take a classic genre that’s been pretty much beat to death & refresh it so it feels like new again? I wouldn’t have been able to tell you a until about 2 months ago when I ran across Jason & Matthew Doucette, creators of Duality ZF.

...these guys have done a lot under the hood that doesn’t happen with a lot of the mainstream titles. Their philosophy [...] is “Give the power to the player. The game’s difficulty should arise from enemy strength, not player weakness.” With that approach to the game right from the start, the twin brothers have worked very hard at making the ship controls perfect. The fighter speed is optimized to within .1 pixels per frame. Basically, instead of punishing the player by changing speeds & such to adjust the difficulty, they made the ship controls perfect throughout that game. To crank the difficulty, they made the adjustments to the enemies. This way, the win/lose scenario falls directly on the players skill, not due to poor controls.

(Bolding by me.)  Read the full article at Quagmire’s Kingdom.

Like To Preview Duality ZF?

If you would like to preview Duality ZF, make use of our newly available promotional materials and contact us for anything else you need.  We are also taking pre- and post-release interviews on a variety of topics including: Duality ZF development, XNA and XBLCG development, indie game development, shoot'em up (shmup) development and genre choice, XBLA efforts, and more...

Also See:

• Duality ZF (official developer site; xona.com)
• Duality ZF April 2009 Trailer (video)
• New Duality ZF Screenshots
• Duality ZF FAQ Answers

External Links:

• Duality ZF (official game site; dualityzf.com)
• Duality ZF Forums (hosted on xbox.com)
• Xona Games (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo)
• Xbox LIVE Community Games (xbox.com, Xbox Forums)
• Imphenzia Music (creator of the Duality ZF soundtrack)
• Quagmire’s Kingdom (David Collins)

About the Author:  I am Matthew Doucette of Xona Games, an award-winning, team-of-two indie studio concentrating on "intense retro" games (Xbox LIVE, PSN, WiiWare, and Windows PC). We've released Decimation X (XBLIG), a 1-4 player shmup, #1 best selling and #1 top rated XBLIG in Japan. We're working on Duality ZF (XBLA), a groundbreaking 1-4 player shmup, which placed #1 in Canada and #5 in the world in Microsoft's Dream Build Play 2010 contest. It features dual play, the ability to control two fighters at once, and a massively upgradable 32-stage spread/laser weapon system. 4 player dual play allows up to eight fighters at once.  Many of these features are never before seen shoot'em up firsts. Both games feature beautiful electronic Imphenzia soundtracks.  Help spread the word with our official dualityzf.com and decimationx.com websites.

P.S. Watch out for Score Rush (official website scorerush.com), another 1-4 player shmup. Coming soon to XBLIG.

*Shmup also known as: shoot'em up, 2D shooter, scrolling shooter, space shooter, spaceship shooter, retro shooter, etc.