(DL)(Danmaku) - [C78] Sora

Story

Sora is a doujin bullet hell shooter (or Danmaku. Don't really like that word, personally) developed by the Japanese indie group Orange Juice.

Sora is a story about about a world enveloped by war, to the point in which people fight for the sake of fighting. To not die, one must kill. It's a rather bleak world, really.

The focus of the game is upon the character Sora. Sora is a girl "born with the power to fight". Of course, the game is rather vague with this, but judging by the limited dialogue that is present in the game, it may only mean that Sora was more qualifyable to have her entire being reworked from head to toe and become what is essentially a living bioweapon. The official site, describes her as the "Ultimate Weapon" created with "latest technology", if I recall correctly.

Gameplay Mechanics

What is notable about Sora is the style in which it plays. Unlike Touhou, in which one must skim bullets to be able to fight back and blindly fire shots, Sora is much more built as a "fast-moving" "fighter/shooter hybrid".

An important feature in Sora, the Dash function, allows Sora to move at an increased speed, allowing her to weave among enemy fire and become invulnerable to certain types of attacks (namely, most beam-type weaponry). While dashing, she can build up a Hyper Gauge and use Hyper Attacks. A Hyper Attack is the equivalent of a Spellcard, or a Bomb in most shooters; it grants invulnerability and damages on-screen enemies. The main difference is the way in which the special attacks are available.

As well, Sora allows the player to pick weapons to use in stages, rather than sticking to one "set" (ie: Reimu A, Reimu B). Sora has three slots to bring three types of weapons into the game, with different types of weapons in each slot. Also notable is the way in which lives are implemented.

Unlike Touhou and like few other shooters, Sora has a health bar. Attacks typically do very little damage, but here's the catch: when using the aforementioned Dash function, Sora builts Heat. The more Heat she has, the more damage she takes. With enough Heat, any attack can become possibly lethal.

Links

And now, I shall provide some links:

The Official Page

The Official Sora Homepage by Orange Juice. It's in Japanese, but also includes a demo and a patch for the game.

http://daidai.moo.jp/sora/soramain.html

The Official Trial

The Demo available at the official page. It includes the beginner weapons as well as the entire first stage and the first boss. Of course, all Japanese.

http://www.shindenken.org/ordd/SoraTrial.zip

Stage 1 Gameplay

A video of gameplay of the first stage, the game, and against the first boss, Alte. What is notable about this video is that it has been translated by a fan. The translation, though, I do not believe is public.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rRits6WiXc&feature=related

Sora Winter Demo 2009

Just as the title says. This is the intro to Sora. Of course, English translations are the reason I favour this video, even though it's not the "latest" version of this trailer. Also features some gameplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zsU8qdlCJY&NR=1

More Information / Full Game Download

Another page which also details the game. It provides a good amount of details as well as controls, if you haven't guessed that all Doujin games use the Z, X, C, V, etc keys by now. As well, there are links to the full game, though, the downloads only give disk image files. Use a disk mounter or a disk burner to run them, I suppose.

http://cosmicbreak.forumotion.com/t691-c78-sora


And that's all. If you have any questions, do feel free to post and ask.