Her mission is to travel the school grounds and the surrounding lands to assemble the ingredients needed for a replacement. The game stars a young first-year witch named Belle MacFae who is studying at the Hagmore School of Witchcraft, and she finds herself falsely accused of ruining the Walpurgisnacht brew. A_Rival, a longtime remixer and original chiptune artist, and composer of the Street Fighter x Mega Man soundtrack.įollowing the release of Ultionus, Andrew went on to create Mystik Belle, a game that is equal parts metroidvania and point-and-click adventure. An ending credits song was composed by Luke Esquivel, a.k.a. Virt, who has composed music for dozens of titles, including Contra 4, the Shantae series, the Mighty Switch Force series, Retro City Rampage, DuckTales: Remastered, and Shovel Knight. In-game music was provided by Jake Kaufman, a.k.a. In addition, since most enemies respawn indefinitely, the player can find a safe area to pick off easy enemies to fill his pockets. This lets you rack up money very quickly, and it is yet another reason to attempt to survive the opening shmup sequence. In addition, there is a point multiplier that grants you up to a 6x bonus for each enemy you destroy without taking damage yourself. The player’s score is represented as a dollar figure, and each enemy you destroy adds to your score. Of course, you’ll also need enough money to afford them… While these upgrades are entirely optional, powering up your weapon can help you to make short work of some of the game’s tougher enemies and bosses. Weapon upgrades include explosive projectiles, rapid fire, and a 3-way shot, and they may only be purchased in that order. You only get to choose one, and you can’t return to the shop to make additional purchases, although you will encounter similar hidden shops in later levels, once again offering an offensive or defensive item choice. You may either purchase a defense-based clothing item or an offense-based weapon upgrade. All other upgrades are entirely optional and may only be acquired through exploration.ĭiscovering a medallion allows the player to unlock a door leading to a hidden character who will offer to sell you one of two powerups. While there are numerous items and upgrades to be had, this is the only powerup that is given to the player outright. Very early in the going, you will encounter an antigravity device, giving Selena a variable 3x jetpack-assisted jump and allowing her to cross larger gaps and reach greater heights. This helps you to take out some of the sky bound enemies and makes up for any blind spots with your standing firing options. While you can’t run and gun, you can shoot while in midair, and you can fire upward or downward at a 30 degree angle while jumping. As with the ship, tapping the button allows the player to get a bit of extra speed out of his firing rate, but the difference here is less noticeable than the standard continuous fire option. Pulling the trigger while running will bring you to a stop where you can fire to the right or left, and upwards in either direction at a 30 degree angle. Selena has a non-variable 1.5x jump, and she can fire her weapon while standing, crouching, or jumping, but not while running, and this gives the game a somewhat deliberate pace. Occasionally, a few asteroids are worked into the mix, and these absorb a lot of hits before being destroyed. There are only a couple of enemy types: green ships move in various formations and chuck the occasional bullet, while red ships move onscreen, stop to fire a large projectile, and then drop down and move straight across the playfield. You move the ship around the screen, blasting waves of enemies, as is typical of the genre. The game begins as a horizontal shmup, with Selena’s ship travelling toward the planet of The Space Prince, accompanied by her robotic companion, Balzac, who hovers near her ship. Those that did provide a story generally only offered motivation for the hero of the tale to fight his or her (but usually his) way through countless enemies.Įverything here, from the story, to the visuals, to the scantily-clad heroine is inspired by these action-based titles, offering colorful worlds, enemies in need of termination, and a strong but unnecessarily well-endowed heroine wrapped in revealing skin-tight spandex. In games of this era, story almost always took a backseat to the action. As far as plots go, it’s about as throwaway as they come, although this was to some degree intentional, as the developer modeled the game after computer-based action titles of the late 80’s and early 90’s.