The Blue Flamingo

Cute, simple, short lived.
It misses control inputs often, resulting in your ship sliding uncontrollably at random unexpected times. Unforgivable bug in a genre of precision.
It has only two levels which is the same map but day/night. Since it's stop motion, it does look very different, lighting and all. Once you've seen both levels, there's not much else to see.
Wish this had more energy behind it. I do love stop motion.

10/10 for model building
1/10 for game play
All the designers need to do is add some story aspects, better and smother ship movement, WAY less input stuttering and 1000 times more imagination into game-play and level/enemy design. and some actual power ups that have an effect on the ship. buy this if you like supporting model photography, avoid if you like playing games.

I really wanted to like this game. It looks so pretty and I'm a suckers for handmade models. I only paid $2.50 for it, but even at that price I don't feel like its worth it.

The music is too pleasant for what is supposed to be a harrowing death race. There are no lives, only a health bar, but that's not the good news it sounds like it should be because there doesn't seem to be anyway to recover health. The money you earn can only be spent on gun and bomb upgrades. There are only two levels (Day and Night) with varying numbers of enemies. Sure, it says level 4, but i's the same as level 2.

There are just blatant issues that any regular game maker could have seen and addressed. So if you're coming here from Game Dungeon and you think it looks really cool, you're right, but temper all other expectations.

No option to repair. "Upgrading" your weapons doesn't do much. Great art style. That is kind of it though. This is a game where I can't recommend but I can't say "avoid it" either. I don't if M&D is still paying attention to this game. Pity, I feel like it could be something if given a proper chance.

I once bought Might & Delight Bundle that was on big discount. I finally decided to play The Blue Flamingo and I really didn't expect this kind of game from this developer. Your goal here is to reach the most possible score without crashing.
[+] Graphics and sountrack seems fine.
[-] There was no tutorial and game is based on rogue-like, permadeath mechanic that I don't personally like.
Game will find their fans, however I'm sure that I'm not one of them. I can recommend you to try it yourself. :)

The Blue Flamingo forms a nice little art project with no apparent design experience or technical expertise.

Positive

• Awesome handcrafted miniatures
  
• Entertaining soundtrack
  
• Funny fireworks SFX + VFX
  
• Interest mechanic on unspent earnings
  

Negative

• Overly sensitive controls comparable to an old Flash game
  
• No mouse ship control support
  
• Awkward gamepad support in menus
  
• Environments look blurry at 1440p
  
• No long-term objectives
  
• No health regeneration
  
• No permanent upgrades
  
[*] No checkpoints

Played once, was OK because I don't remember how much I paid. I purchased a few years back. I don't plan to play again, Hundreds of games are better than this one. At least I contributed some money to the developers so that they can continue and over time make better games we will stick to.

[quote]
Grade = C. Worth a buy, if you enjoy score attack gameplay to beat your friend score. However, if you looking for big content, don't buy it

⚖️Check Scoring Scheme
[/quote]

[table]
[tr]
[th]GRADE[/th]
[th]SCORE (19)[/th]
[th]WORTH BUYING?[/th]
[th]OVERALL[/th]
[th]DISCOUNT[/th]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]A+[/td]
[td]57 ~ 70[/td]
[td]Valuable than Normal Price![/td]
[td] -[/td]
[td]No Wait[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]A[/td]
[td]43 ~ 56[/td]
[td]Worth Normal Price[/td]
[td] -[/td]
[td]No Wait[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]B[/td]
[td]29 ~ 42[/td]
[td]Good Value[/td]
[td] -[/td]
[td]Wait 10%~35%[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]C[/td]
[td]15 ~ 28[/td]
[td]Overpriced[/td]
[td] ✔[/td]
[td]Wait 40%~90%[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]D[/td]
[td]0 ~ 14[/td]
[td]Not Recommend[/td]
[td] -[/td]
[td]Wait 100%[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]

THE UNIQUE:

PLAYER CHALLENGES:

COMMON FEEDBACK:

MORE INFORMATION:

Great graphics. Really like how the entire world is devoid of ray-traced anything.
I think this type of graphics are too much overlooked, recently.
Looks amazing and very refreshing. Controls are responsive.
I wish there was a way to fix the ship but, obviously, game-play is balanced as designed.

Wow! What could be one of the best indie/arcade games developed during its' time, got to the finish line just to drop the ball... Excellent game for the first three rounds, afterwhich a pattern emerges; levels repeat without any diverse change, and the music continues on the same beat every round. Don't get me wrong, the game does have some nice qualities, yet I would only recommend as a in between game, something to wake up to, before playing another game, or just in boredom. Sale purchase, wouldn't spend a lot.

Curious? Yes...

Boring? Yes too...

Die, restart, die, restart... No permanent upgrades, not a lot of different enemys, not very good control of the plane... very simple...

There is A LOT of older games must better than this. Nothing new under the sun.

A really interesting visual concept that makes for very special graphics. A nice tough is that they also filmed a night level.

The gameplay however is repetitive and basic. Also, the technical execution is lackluster: I could not play fullscreen because the game does not support a resolution of 1920*1200 correctly and I could not assign the A button on my 360 controller because that button was also used to open the assign popup again for the same button.

Regardless of the flaws, I applaud the visual experiment that this game is. We need more interesting innovation like this! :)

You can have all the "generic shmup", "pretty visuals, shallow gameplay", "imprecise controls" that you want, for my money (and I DID pay full price, gladly) this is a great little game...there may not be a whole lot of depth in the story but I couldn't care less about that, at least there IS a bit of story in it, rather than just shooting up some sh!t.

I love the visuals, because I love the fact that you can SEE the time and effort, and care, that went into making everything. The audio is great as it doesn't distract from the game itself, the music doesn't drown out the sound effects, nor does the reverse happen, it's a great balance.

As for the controls being imprecise, grab a deck of cards guys, deal. Play it enough and you'll learn to cope, I have and I've only played maybe 45 minutes at this point. That's not to say I'm very good at it, I've never been particularly good at shmups but I like them well enough I guess, and this one I particularly enjoy.

Give it a decent chance and you'll most likely enjoy it as well!

The Blue Flamingo is a visually very pleasing game and could have been a really good shmup, but in this genre you need perfect controls without any lag, and there it fails.

The Blue Flamingo definitely has an interesting art style. All the aircraft, missiles, laser platforms and other things you encounter are actual models, and all the explosives etc. are also made from miniature pyrotechnics. You're also flying above what looks to be model landscapes as backgrounds.

The music on the other hand is uninteresting and the soundeffects are decidedly standard, but not to the point of annoyance.

There are too few enemy variations which is perhaps understandable since everything had to be photographed from actual models but worse is that they all use the same patterns. The challenge in most shmups comes from the variance in enemies and their different patterns, here the challenge is simply increased by giving you more enemies to deal with at the same time.

That in itself is not a big issue, worse is that like any shmup, The Blue Flamingo lives and dies by the accuracy and responsiveness of its controls. That is where I have issues with this game. Controlling it with an Xbox360 controller works decently enough, but several times I got damaged or lost because I ran into a bullet or missile which I was sure I had dodged -- and I had, but the control was a little laggy in registering.

This will not be much of an issue for the first two levels or so and you might not even notice it but as soon as the sceen becomes busier, you will begin getting annoyed by how unresponsive your ship feels.

If you get this at a decent price, TBF may be worth your time if you want to check out a unique visual style, but I cannot recommend it to people looking for a serious shmup.

The Blue Flamingo is a neat "art game" that has a unique artstyle created by actually building the terrain and all the ships in miniature and then converting photographs and video of them into the background and sprites used in the game. Somewhat defying the tendencies of "typical" art games, it's actually a shoot-'em-up, rather than a puzzle platformer or walking simulator.

Unfortunately, that's around where the neatness ends - it's a fairly short score attack game, where you play through more or less the same two levels repeatedly, just getting slightly more difficult each time, with very clunky controls. The shortness in terms of content is likely due to the limitations of the artstyle, which constrained them to only having one model for the terrain because building an impressively detailed 32-foot-long model is hard and only so many models for enemies, as those too had to be hand-built and hand-painted, but the loose controls are less forgivable, as they combine with the lack of ability to restore your health to make a game where you're rewarded for playing very conservatively, which ends up feeling rather boring.

In the end, I can't really recommend The Blue Flamingo because ultimately it doesn't hold up as anything except a neat visual experience.

Novelty graphics and sound effects that while beatiful and charming, quickly wear out their welcome after only a few minutes of dealing with the horrible controls (even menu control with an Xbox360 pad is atrocious). The designers obvious lack of shmup experience make this nothing more than a poorly executed artistic expression under the guise of a "shoot 'em up".

3 out of 10

While it is pretty to look at, The Blue Flamingo is rather underwhelming as a game.

1) Control lag and movement inertia. I hope you don't like having fine control over your ship. It makes the game vastly less enjoyable to play as a result.

2) Enemy design is incredibly basic. There's a lot of the same enemy from the last level, who flies the exact same way and shoots the exact same way, over and over, level after level. There are even enemies that litereally do nothing but take a bunch of hits. Nothing remotely interesting starts to show up until you've looped the game around six times.

3) Weapons are dull and uninteresting. Leveling up your shot only increases fire rate. No shot type selection or variety to choose from.

4) Color selection. In most games of this type, certain colors are reserved for important information (such as enemy bullets), so they are always visible and clear. The nighttime cityscape background breaks this basic design rule, as bullets and enemies blend seamlessly into the background colors. Lucky for us enemy fire is absurdly predictable.

5) Menus ignore your button config; you always have to press enter to do anything regardless of what you set for your action buttons. Also they use blinking text to show what you are highlighting, meaning you have to wait a second just to see what you're actually selecting.

In conclusion, The Blue Flamingo has sloppy controls and uninteresting gameplay. Not recommended.

If you're looking for good shmups on Steam, I can recommend: Crimzon Clover, Kamui, Jamestown, Alltynex 2nd, Astebreed, Danmaku Unlimited 2, Ether Vapor Remaster, RefleX, and Satazius.

This is a game I REALLY wanted to like, but...

The art is gorgeous, the main reason I bought the game without checking ANY reviews. I just dig that handmade look, just what I also loved in The Swapper and The Dream Machine. But where as The Swapper and The Dream Machine are actually great games, with great design, The Blue Flamingo unfortunately isn't, and it's a shame, it really is. The look and the soundtrack had a great foundation, especially from athmosphere point of view, but the game and level design part fails hard. It is just boring to play, unsatisfied. I hate to be this mean with my assumptions, but to me it almost looks like the developers have not played a lot of classic shoot 'em ups, haven't got what makes those games great. The controls feel also somehow a bit off, also collision model. But those are minor gripes compared to the downright bad level design.

Buy it for the art, but don't expect to enjoy it more than 10 minutes.

Story
Blue Flamingo does not try and get fancy with a crazy story about an elite pilot taking on an entire army or a prototype jet that needs to eliminate and evil alien race. The premise is that you are a pilot and you come to shoot some flying objects and get a high score … so you do. It keeps it short and sweet. Get the high score and compare it to your friends and the world on the leader board.

Visuals
This game looks beautiful! There are gorgeous desert landscapes that you fly over with excellent details that you probably miss as you focus on dodging bullets and missiles. The game essentially has 2 levels; rust colored desert landscape and a dark blue night flight. The design gives a very steam punk feel. Almost like you are playing in the world of Lost Exile (Look it up. It is a great series. See pic below). All of the graphics for the bullets, ships, environment and explosions are crisp clean. The simplistic color palette, crisp details and beautiful environments are the highlight of this game.

Van Ship

Audio
There are two soundtracks in this game. One for each level. They match perfectly with the overall theme. On the rustic southwest level you have some old time guitar rifts that fit right in. The colorful night level has a more upbeat jazz sound track that makes me continually want to dance my ship across the screen when there are no targets. The sound effects are really crisp. I feel like I can hear every nut and bolt ping off the rocks below.

Controls
There is not much to say about the controls in this game. They are simplistic controls that use 1 joystick for navigation with 2 buttons to attack. They were very responsive and need to be as the game gradually progresses from simplistic shooter to bullet hell as you complete each level.

Gameplay
The gameplay is very simplistic and also very clever. The idea is to get the highest score which in this game is represented through money. You collect money by shooting down aerial objects. You also collect coins when you shoot down “teams” of targets. You get bonus money at the end of each round by testing your skills in target practice. All of this is pretty standard fare for a shooter. Blue Flamingo has one caveat that makes that quest for the highest score that much more interesting. At the end of the level, you have the option of spending your points to upgrade your weapons. By upgrading your weapons you stand a better chance for surviving. The problem is that you just spent a chunk of your score to have a better chance at the next level. You also collect a small amount of interest on your money while playing. So if you choose to improve your plane than you also choose to make less money on the points that you have already earned. That simple twist makes this game endless fun. It allows you to try new methods of spending your points to maximize your overall score.

Overall
I definitely give this game 4.5/5.0 Bricks. The catchy music and beautiful environments make this simplistic shooter a joy to play as you find that perfect balance to achieve your high score.

For more go to http://brick-media.com/blue-flamingo/

A very simple airplane shooting game, nothing really special about it, but the handmade models in the game amazed me!