I support the OCCUPY movement

vonShmup Alpha

Published on January 18, 2012 - Posted in , 2

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This is a rather raw (alpha-level) construct–the loading screen is broken, so give it a few minutes (it’s 11mb).

I’ve been into shoot’em’ups (‘shmups’) for quite a while (Sega Genesis I think) and I’ve been wanting to make my own for almost as long. This isn’t the shmup I wanted to build but this is an attempt I made regardless. A few local devs suggested I publish it in this state, even though there’s only one level and a few game-breaking bugs and some missing features. Turns out social pressure from other developers is extremely effective :)

I won’t be continuing development on this one anymore, since the shmup I really wanted to make is now in progress… sort of. I’m going to start releasing smaller games in a more experimental stage rather than releasing full-blown constructs since it’s more exciting/invigorating for me.

Some different features of the game:

  • Parallax scrolling actually affects gameplay, in that you switch from ground to air (and vice versa) attack modes by pressing shift
  • Capital ship battles! :D You have big ships that occasionally come to your aid
  • Collision is pixel-perfect for ait-to-air, but box-based for ground targets
  • Outlined terrain that you can use against enemies, but you should dodge yourself

You can switch weapons by pressing 1 (gattling), 2 (missiles), and 3 (beam).

I’m curious to hear your thoughts. Thanks for playing.

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  • Will Emigh

    It’s a lot of fun and I especially like the capital ship battles! I didn’t like having to switch between ground and air combat; I have a hard enough time shooting things and dodging bullets!

    There are some small polish issues (I didn’t understand why I couldn’t damage the first capital ship until about a minute later when I realized it was on my side; it’s hard to see bullets on the dark blue sea background) but I didn’t run into any major bugs.

    The capital ship battles were sweet, but I would have liked to have some control over it, maybe by calling them (sort of like using a bomb) or by earning them by getting enough kills.

    The controls are really smooth and I’m impressed by the framerate. I didn’t see any kind of slowdown at all!

  • Dave Toulouse

    I like the take on the turret. I’m not a huge shoot’em’ups fan so I have no idea if it’s common but hey like it. Capital ships are a nice touch too.

    I had a hard time spotting patterns in the bullets to be able to avoid them. Again I’m not sure if it’s because I don’t play a lot of these games but it sure felt difficult.

    I missed a lot of powerups simply because I didn’t see them. Making them bigger/flashier might help here.

    Nice start for an alpha! Looking forward for the next version.