Blog - My friend's experimental SHMUPS
Monday, April 28, 2008One of my coworkers from Emagination sent me an interesting little simple game prototype he's working on.
It's a SHMUP with a unique twist: while flying around, shooting enemies and dodging their massive storm of bullets as in SHMUP tradition... the player can also draw on the screen (a string of pixels that almost forms a solid line) where each pixel is a little miniature shield that can block attacks. In other words, it's a SHMUP where you draw shields wherever and in whatever shape you need at that moment. (They don't last very long, so you're almost constantly drawing.)
As one could predict, the difficulty curve is quite steep as your focus is trapped having to shift between traditional SHMUP play of moving/shooting and the new drawing mechanic - or, in control terms, between WASD keyboard commands and the mouse.
It's currently only a very early prototype, though, so we'll see if he can eventually eliminate or at least reduce this problem.
In any case, this "combine keyboard with mouse play" idea was his starting thought experiment behind the project, so hopefully it works out.
Along similar lines (SHMUP that includes mouse as well as WASD play), another idea he had for a future game is a SHMUP where instead of shooting, players create portals to teleport the enemy's own attacks into themselves.
Basically, Portal meets a SHMUP. That also would seem to benefit from less split-focus problems if the player didn't have to worry about shooting in the traditional sense, and only playing with the new portal mechanic on top of movement.
On an only vaguely related topic, I have decided that the game I would most like to see a Portal-like mechanic implemented in is the GTA series. Think of the all new brands of mischief you could cause... *eg*
Labels: design
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 12:01 AM
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