LittleBear
says: You're singing to the preacher.
Shmup-Dev now has information up on their next contest, the Dragon SHMUP Competition. The last contest, the Horizontal Shooter with Boss Competition, provided quite a few great entries. Let’s hope for more of the same with this one. The contest runs over the next 2 months, expect coverage of the entries as they start to trickle in.
Star Horizon has been announced at Shmup-Dev. The current posting there “is intended to be only a compatibility test and combat feedback”, so go ahead and help out. The game looks great, and looks to be designed for multiplayer, team combat.
Tempest: Event Horizon is a re-make of the Atari classic from Blackrat Studios. It’s what I would call a “blackbox” re-make, with gameplay and behaviours re-created through observation and memory. It’s competent enough, though it lacks any animation in the enemies of the original. It also lacks most of the frantic excitement of the original. It does include a level editor though, which is a nice feature. Free to download.
Tried out a couple Nintendo DS homebrew projects on my machine today.
The first is the start of a shmup, called Shoot & Score, information here. Not much yet, but I do like the idea of using both screens for a kind of tate mode.
A more interesting project is a port of Dragon’s Lair to the DS. That’s right, the old (and classic in my books) laser disk game. Check it out here. So far it looks great, runs really well on the actual DS. I just have to figure out how to play the first levels, or even if they support input yet. Image is from the DSLair site.
Pixel_Outlaw (Ryan Burnside) says that with v5.0 Heavy Gun Blossom is finished. As an experiment it’s worked fairly well. It’s certainly bullet hell, you against the machine… the one machine that generates bullets in some good patterns. The one problem (or challenge, depends on your point of view) is the reliance on forward firing shots. Two of your three shots are this way, while the third is like the “toothpaste” weapon from Raiden and arcs to your target in a bezier type curve. The challenge comes about because it’s so hard to get the enemy in front of you to hit it with your other weapons. But that’s a classic trade-off in games, risk-reward, I just feel it needs a little tweaking here. I’m looking forward to more games from Ryan.
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