Fraxy

A Freeware arena Shoot'Em Up that centers around user-made content. The game comes with an editor that lets you make your own enemies, then lets you blow them to bits.

It comprises of two modes: Free Play, which pits you against one or more of the available enemies and Try, which gives the player different scenarios. The latter is not as popular, due to the fact that it's harder to make scenarios than enemies.

Available Here, with more bosses available here.


 * April Fools' Day: Gave us the T-401 Vic Viper.
 * Attack Its Weak Point - All the enemies are built around a single core. Guess what'll destroy the whole boss if you blow it up?
 * Beam Spam
 * Boss Game - Try mode is being neglected.
 * To be fair, Try creation is much less intuitive than boss creation.
 * Recently, however, try creation has started to become more popular. Notable examples are Vortexreaper's Fraxy HQ try and User:Zarro Tsu's Akujin Shoyuu.
 * Boss in Mook Clothing: Cores with invisible weapons.
 * Hyper Infinitus. That sucker will eat you alive.
 * Boss Rush - Free Play mode in a nutshell.
 * Boss Subtitles: "Incoming [boss name] rank 100!"
 * Bullet Hell - Depends on the enemy, but a few definitely fit.
 * There is also a play mode called "danmaku", which reduces your hitbox to 1 pixel.
 * and a new ship type that's called, yes, Bullet Hell: very little health, pretty fast, and requires special energy to fire Blaster weapons.
 * Bullfight Boss: Mini Core. Turns to face you. Charges. Repeats those steps until destroyed.
 * The Big Core part also does this as well, only it's much slower.
 * Ditto with the Fighter Cores.
 * Cast from Hit Points - Your life bar doubles as energy for your weapons.
 * Chasing Your Tail: Head Core.
 * Clipped-Wing Angel: Sakra-Devanam Human Type. Not only does she turn into A FETUS, she rips off Iwanaga and later  EXPLODES. 
 * Cores and Turrets Boss: The most basic kind of boss there is.
 * Continuity Reboot: The 'Moth' series was originally made by Areo. User:Oneshiningstar picked up where he left off. Areo comes back with a slightly newer backstory.
 * Creepy Cool Crosses: User:Alex Mdle's Emperor's second phase. Also some of his other bosses.
 * Crosshair Aware: Remote Blast. Bonus points for moving at 3 different speeds, including instantaneously.
 * TekTo's Atlas also does this its' later stages, though it doesn't involve remote blasts.
 * Ebo's Space Battle Ship 1300K does that, but again doesn't involve remote blasts.
 * Deadly Walls: Energy walls, obviously.
 * Death Is a Slap on The Wrist: You have infinite lives. Your mission is to whack the boss down as quickly as possible.
 * In Try mode you cannot save replays if you continue after dying, but you can still beat the Try.
 * User:Zarro Tsu's sin boss, A.N.G.E.L., will end right before its final form if you die AT ALL. Iff you can survive the complete butt-rape of the first few forms, your totally awesome-riffic reward is.... more butt-rape.
 * Design-It-Yourself: Fraxy comes with a creation editor that allows you to create and edit bosses and such. A number of weapons and parts can be customized allowing for unique patterns and behaviors.
 * Doppelganger Attack: Eboshidori's Phantom 30K, among others.
 * Dual Boss: Son of Makuta's Zoetrope. 1 main core and 2 semicircular ships. Dang.
 * Eat CrossTheRubicon's Big Core Mk 1 Fleet. Have fun fighting 5 Big Cores at once!
 * The Deploy Core is built for this purpose. Paste several drones onto it and the core will launch them all as soon as the fight begins.
 * Energy Ball: Power Ball and Ion Ring (with Fill option enabled)
 * Eye Beams: Zapan D.
 * Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Happens on occation.
 * However a special mention goes to Vortexreaper's "Completly Unfair Fight" with the boss Absolute Massacre that spams enoth bullets to make Hibachi jealous and if you die the boss fully heals.
 * Fake Difficulty: Disappearing, but still present.
 * The use of the Screen (blur) effector looped just to confuse the player is one example.
 * Fanfic: Some of the more prevalent boss makers out there like to put together stories to go with their bosses. Eboshidori is one (his "Mara" series is finished and on YouTube), as is A70M1C (the "][nfector" series).
 * Getting your boss ][nfected is actually a very great honor for you as a boss creator.
 * Follow the Leader: Eboshidori pretty much singlehandedly invented the "What If...?" scenarios, the Search-Light wings, custom player weapons and the very, very often used "Globe of light spewing bullets" type of boss. And many, many creations with borrowed ideas followed.
 * Kinda subverted in the fact that everybody is aware of that. Eboshidori is to Fraxy, is what Simpsons are to animated sitcoms.
 * Flunky Boss: EBO-ALLTYNEX and EBO-GIGATYNEX HC.
 * Freud Was Right: Phallic Avenger!
 * Comet Drone Cluster, if you fought Koishi Komeiji.
 * Also the "cutscene" the player is treated to before fighting Birth, one of Eboshidori's creations.
 * Recently, a Fraxian called Omoresu created a boss with a weak spot and attack that both came from a....peculiar place. Naturally, people started to notice.
 * Frickin' Laser Beams
 * Giant Hands of Doom: TekTo's Atlas
 * Glass Cannon: The new (as of version 20090706) Quicker type. Its attack is insane, its initial boost is insane, its regeneration is just as insane, but its slow and lacks hit points.
 * Heroic RROD: Over Soll Mode.
 * High Altitude Battle: Use of the two alternative backgrounds.
 * High Speed Battle: Use of background scrolling.
 * Hopeless Boss Fight: Any of Henny5555's bosses.
 * Also Ultimatepower22's Infinity's end V2. It crashes your hard drive.
 * Aquamancia proves in this video that it can be beatable.
 * Humanoid Abomination: Guess.
 * Hyper-Destructive Bouncing Ball: Putting too many Ion Rings into a playfield bounded by Energy Walls or Barriers.
 * ISO Standard Human Spaceship: Averted somewhat with the default ship-it's grey, but there's no discernible cockpit.
 * Last Starfighter: Applies to pretty much every boss. However, since every boss is That One Boss, most players end up dying a lot.
 * Leitmotif: Several bosses are associated with certain themes.
 * Omoresu's sound effect-laced title theme.
 * Macross Missile Massacre: Missile part. LOOPED!
 * Missiles can be set to release projectiles upon explosion (via extra parameters, as always). What if the projectiles are set to be MORE MISSILES?
 * Hint: Compy go BOOM.
 * Marathon Boss: A good majority of bosses.
 * Mind Screw: Zarro Tsu 's latest boss Wrath especilly during the final phase against White where it seems like reality itself is breaing down.
 * More Dakka: Needle Gun on Attack Action 3.
 * Looped weapons.
 * Mirror Boss: Loads!
 * Nintendo Hard - Everything.
 * One-Winged Angel: The Fraxy community loves this trope, as many bosses utilize this.
 * A Famous Example is A70M1C's Osiris, which seems to be a mechanical thing before transforming into an Energy Being for a long battle.
 * Atomic Vault 99, which turns out to be holding
 * Usually, anyway. It be beaten in under a minute with the correct equipment and levels.
 * Eboshidori recently created one for the Final Boss of his Fanfic Fragments of Men, Samsara. After nearly depleting his life bar, he merges with a crucifix, then attemps to fly to the top of the screen. If you don't beat him before then, he, cross and all, transform into his angelic Sunyata form, which rains even more Bullet Hell down on you than before. Admittedly, fighting him like that is a lot better than just beating his temporary Clipped-Wing Angel form, but still...
 * Actually, you need to destroy an item box when he stops teleporting and starts to re-energize. Otherwise, he just crucifies himself.
 * Recurring Boss Template - Several bosses, both presupplied and user made tend to be flying Laser Blades.
 * Reflecting Laser: Reflect Ray will reflect off lasers, barriers, energy walls and even blades!
 * Sailor Earth: You'd be surprised how many Big Core-style bosses there are.
 * Self-Imposed Challenge: Bosses are to be fought with bullets only. This trope is so ingrained in Fraxiers that they make bosses with this in mind.
 * Sequential Boss: Fraxy is up to the ears in these.
 * The Phantom 30k changes shape based on what attack pattern it wants to use next.
 * Shout-Out: Essentially, the rule is that "If it appears in a shmup, we can remake it."
 * It is even thought that the Plasma Ring came from Touhou and the 3-armed powerup came from Cho Ren Sha 68K.
 * Not to mention that the pre supplied boss "Viper" looks like the Vic Viper, complete with options floating around it.
 * Eboshidori's Acala and True Acala are shout outs to the final bosses of Radiant Silvergun, Xiga and the Stone-Like.
 * Not to mention Eboshidori managed to port, of all things, the SEVEN FORCE from Gunstar Heroes with ALL its Modes GAME ACCURATE AND INTACT!!
 * And let's not forget Virgo from RefleX.
 * A70M1C's ][nfected seem to be based on the Flood from Halo and the Beast from Homeworld Cataclysm.
 * Not just to games: Eboshidori based Sunyata's design off of the 15th Angel.
 * It shouldn't be surprising that Touhou gets a little homage of its own on several occasions.
 * Special mention must go to User:Pure Question's Great Shining Seal. It has named danmaku attacks called "Lost Arts". Guess what is the only other game series anyone can think of that has named danmaku patterns?
 * eXceed?
 * Someone made a Yukkuri boss, which actually uses different spellcards (Touhou ones, obviously. No names.), and it changes its face per spellcard, too. It has; Lingering Cold, One-Legged Return Hit, Icicle Fall (No, it didn't double the memes by making it the easy variant - it's the one with the aimed shots), Terrifying Hypnotism minus the lasers (VERY appropriate considering what the boss is doing.), Kandata's Rope (Fortuantely, it doesn't last anywhere near as logn or get anywhere NEAR as difficult as the original), Flying Phoenix, Ancestors Standing Beside Your Bed, and (not shown in the video) Forbidden Fruit. Yes, that's no less than 3 extra boss spellcards, at least one from Aya's games, and some of the somewhat memetic characters' spellcards (hell, one of them is simply the non-memetic version!)
 * A while ago, a boss named Keeper of the Astral Inferno was made. It mimics the attacks of Utsuho Reiuji, the Stage 6 boss of Subterranean Animism. The secret form does not count.
 * Soon after, another boss maker named hexidextrous decided to make more Touhou-esque bosses as a tribute to the above boss. He has currently made bosses based off of Kisume, the previously mentioned Yukkuri, Medicine Melancholy, Ran, Yuyuko, and Patchouli Knowledge.
 * Sinister Geometry: Oomagatuhi's DANMAKU-DAMASII-Mk5 as well as Eboshidori's True Acala and the second form of Broken Dream.
 * SNK Boss: Almost every boss.
 * Surprise Difficulty: A typical new player pits himself against the premade bosses, gaining confidence. Then he goes to the Fraxy redux, downloads a few bosses and realises the error of his ways.
 * Soundtrack Dissonance: Broken Dream's final form.
 * Spread Shot: All 3 flavours!
 * Initial Burst: Practically every bullet-type weapon can be this.
 * Spray Burst: The hardest to make of the three, but sometimes present.
 * Exploding Shot: Energy Egg/Missile.
 * Stationary Boss: There are quite a few of these.
 * Tactical Suicide Boss: Opening up of weakpoints to do powerful attacks.
 * Teleport Spam: Samsara
 * One of Vortexreaper's enemies, Valkrance, also qualifies.
 * Theme Naming: Rubidioth, Cesioth...
 * Hydraxis, Heliaxis, Beryaxis, Boraxis...
 * Trick Boss: Possible, but rare. Usually involves the rest of the boss suddenly becoming visible!
 * A more notable offender is the Clock Trap, which starts out as a harmless, unprotected core until you find out that was a holding mechanisim for a robotic laser blender that you'd be crazy to take on. Luckily, it's also defeated by managing to escape it's gravitational pull and the surrounding laser emitters on top of being dedicated enough to destroy it's core.
 * Turns Red: Almost all the time. Number of times vary considerably, but generally, the more times, the more painful.
 * Up to Eleven: "Death Label" Bosses, which are harder versions of other bosses. Yes, even THOSE bosses.
 * Urban Legend of Zelda: Supposedly a Try editor is in the works, but no one knows when Mon (the game's creator) will have time to work on it.
 * Or even whether he will even start on it.
 * Wave Motion Gun - The Laser. Bonus points for being available in three different sizes.
 * "Wake-Up Call" Boss: Face it. The Fraxy Creator doesn't produce tough bosses. Barring the Clock Trap.
 * What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic: Several bosses are re-imaginings of deities from several religions (Eboshidori's guardian series is built around this, with every Buddhist Deity except for the Buddha himself showing up and the protagonist being the Buddhist devil ), one sticks the player on a crucifix, and one crucifies himself to achieve his final form.
 * Zero Effort Boss: Any boss that self-destructs whenever it appears, usually due to event issues.
 * Zero Effort Boss: Any boss that self-destructs whenever it appears, usually due to event issues.

Tropes Specific to the Fan Fics

 * Alternate History: How the "Mara" series sustained itself after the defeat of the Big Bad.
 * Big Bad: When is there not?
 * Body Horror: A70M1C's ][nfected start out normal, then turn into a freaking Cosmic Horror shortly after taking enough damage.
 * Corrupt Church: Omoresu's Angelo Storyline has the Nyghts Clique, who worship Angelus.
 * Boxorak's Soul Harvest had the Skelati, beings that harvest souls in an attempt to both appease their god and free him from a dimensional rift.
 * Cosmic Horror: Many Fraxy Fanfic series have one of these, either mentioned or as the Big Bad.
 * Eboshidori's series has Sakra-Devanam,
 * Designated Hero: Mara. No matter who created him or why, no matter the intentions, Mara has the simple mission of  If he needs to , so be it.
 * Deus Ex Machina: There's a lot of this.
 * Deus Est Machina: The big two: Reactor-00 and Sakra Devanam.
 * Did You Just Blow Up Cthulhu/God/Satan/Bezerk AI 305: Let's just say those tiny little fighters are pretty damn powerful.
 * Gainax Ending: The end of Eboshidori's Mara series.
 * Humans Are the Real Monsters:
 * Fraxy: Soul Harvest example:
 * In fact, this is taken to such an extreme that  
 * Light Is Not Good: Sakra-Devanam and A70M1C'S Reactor 00.
 * Samus Is a Girl:
 * Sealed Evil in a Can: Reactor-00, the ][nfected...hell, there are a lot of them.
 * Sealed Good in a Can: Double Subverted With User:Pure Question's Great Shining Seal/Arcana
 * Serial Escalation: Eboshidori created a boss called Matrix Hibachi, which was pretty hard. Shortly after, he gave us the "Death Label" version, which had bullet patterns similar to the original, only harder. To clarify, the original was already Bullet Hell.
 * User:Zarro Tsu, in what seems to be a complete "Screw You" to the player, released the "Death Label" version of his A.N.G.E.L. Boss. This is regarded as a completely evil move because....well, see Death Is a Slap on The Wrist.

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