Jeff Minter‘s Gridrunner++ has now been converted to Flash, and is playable on Facebookhere. You’ll have to have a Facebook account, then install the application and use the same link to play it. Also, update your version of Flash for the best experience.
This port was done by Mark Ripley, who also ported Gridrunner++to mobile. He’s managed to capture the essence of the original very nicely, and it’s well worth playing as the original is perhaps the best mouse controlled shooter there is.
Last Alarm is an upcoming XNA release. I’m somewhat in shock at the moment at how… “not good” this looks. Some great comments in the Shmups Forum thread.
Robot and the Cities that Built Him is a stylish little Flash game by 2D Boy. It was put together in 7 days, described as a prototype, and also as unfinished. Besides having one of the greatest game titles in recent memory, there’s also this great quote:
What is man? What is machine? What does it mean to be human? Perhaps from a distance we’re not so different from giant kill bots? Can a computer make you cry? Yes, if it has lasers.
Game play is simple, and will get more frantic as you progress. It’s a simple resource management game, using the mouse to manage your robots. Click on them and they’ll recharge, if you don’t they’ll die. You don’t actually get to shoot, that’s done automatically. Collect the hearts from the humans that are killed to increase your money. With money you can buy more robots or upgrade the ones you have.
“All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” – Roy Batty
R-Theta II is an interesting game by ThetaGames, where instead of the usual Cartesian coordinate system a Polar coordinate system is used. This means your ship’s position is determined by its radius R and an angle Theta. Up and Down control your R, while your ship automatically scrolls (Theta). Think gallery shooter wrapped and distorted around a circle, like a sonar screen.
The game is fairly well done, though the pace is far too slow. I think it would benefit greatly from ramping up in difficulty a lot faster than it currently does. You have shots, ‘C‘, and missiles, ‘X‘, that do have a nice balance. Shots travel roughly 90 degrees, while missiles travel the whole circumference (but you can only have one on screen at a time). The music stands out, fits the game perfectly, and the whole vector graphic thing is filmed in Jittervision. On the whole a good effort, and I hope to see more ideas from ThetaGames. Shmup-Dev thread is here.
Mazer Mayhem has been updated to version 0.11. Collision detection has been tweaked as has the “enemy arrival” algorithm. You can also adjust the perspective with the right analog stick, though it springs back to “normal”. Original post.
LittleBear
says: Wake up and spill the coffee.
