I have no real affinity for SHMUPS.

Nor do I have any real affinity with grammar. It took me nearly ten minutes to begin writing this, as I was unable to discern whether affinity should be followed by for or with. But then I was all like, "Hey there, Arcbound Ravager." So it's probably for, right? I don't know--it didn't seem right, so I stuck in a with in the next instance of affinity.

Anyway,

I have no real affinity with SHMUPS.

And I don't like that term either. I like the term bullet hell, but that's not exactly what I'm about to get into here. I suppose I can call this a lesser bullet hell, or a demi-bullet hell, or a halfling bullet hell, or a dwarven bullet hell, or a gnomian bullet hell.

Apologies if I'm beginning to sound racist.

Magical Mariel! is a zero budget, zero calorie game extremely short in length. It'll take you no more than 10 minutes to complete. Yeah, 10 minutes for 200mb probably isn't worth your time, but I'd absolutely love for you to play through it. It's an excruciatingly simple single button shooter with no real depth, and I'm not entirely sure if it's fun. I mean, I certainly thought it was alright for awhile. But having playtested this thing every time a new line of code was written in fear of the whole game falling apart cause I knew absolutely nothing about coding and then picked up some basic idea of how coding works about a week ago yet still know nothing about coding has caused me to become completely numb to the experience.

I can't judge this game objectively anymore.

And that really bothers me.

But I think I'm beginning to understand how some development processes play out and the assets required to build something of quality. And, to my dismay, how unforgivably easy it is to become so attached to a game you developed that anything below a 7/10 just won't do.

I don't know. I'm no writer, and I can't code stuff. This game was terrifyingly frustrating to build. But play some Magical Mariel!

If you don't like it, that's cool.

If you happen to net enough enjoyment out of it to tell your friends to play it,

tell your friends to play it.

Then tell them to hook me up with a job.

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Download Magical Mariel! here:

http://www.filefactory.com/file/41xwc2275drn/n/Magical_Mariel.rar

or:

http://www.4shared.com/rar/Teu63oJc/Magical_Mariel.html

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TLDR; I made a game. I don't know if it's good, but I implore you to play it. I need a job.

*WINDOWS 8 USERS may want to consider running in compatibility mode.

If you happen across a fault module name: dmsynth.dll error, I don't know what's up, but it seems to be a Windows 8 exclusive issue.