LittleBear
says: An honest brew makes its own friends.
Congratulations to kdmiller3, his game Dreadnought Crisis has received the most votes and has been declared the winner of Session 5. I think I’ll send an email using the Shmup-Dev forum’s admin feature, announcing the next session and the voting round. Over-all I think the sessions are doing well, and getting better, but I’d still like to see more involvement.
sigbus is mpersano‘s very interesting entry for the Air and Land rapid prototyping session. In it you play around a small planetary object, protecting your portals from aliens in a sort-of reverse Defender.
Game play is nice and simple. You can shoot the alien ships with your laser, or bomb the alien “men” before they get to a portal. The arrival of an alien ship is indicated by a light ring, a nice touch that was very intuitive. Simple but fun.
mpersano doesn’t seem to think this is worth continuing, but I disagree. I thought it might be interesting to combine this with the dual-mode ideas. A dune-buggy type vehicle while on the asteroid, and a ship in space?
Dreadnought Crisis is another excellent kdmiller3 entry in the Shmup-Dev rapid prototype sessions. So far he’s contributed an entry for each of the 5 sessions, all very fun and playable. Dreadnought Crisis was inspired by The Dreadnaught Factor, though I haven’t played it.
The game is a lot of fun. A huge ship, the Dreadnought in the title, approaches Earth. You’ve got a number of chances to destroy it before it destroys the the planet. Essentially you keep launching out at it, destroying as much as you can with each pass. Blow-up the engines to slow it down, bomb the antimatter silos, and wipe-out the energy vents. The only thing missing, I think, is a larger variety of air-based enemies.
See also: Assault Wing, Rocket Bomb, Laser Maze, Galaga has a Posse.
Käfer is Sar‘s entry in Session 5, Air and Land. It’s a very tough, bullet hell game with the player’s ship transitioning between land-based and air-based.
I particularly like the graphics in Käfer, it’s obvious time was spent on them. The air-based enemies are especially cool. The thing I don’t like too much is the “shadowing” of them when you’re in tank mode. Not sure what the answer is, though, as it’s hard not to obscure the screen either way.
This game really makes you shift from land to air, through the use of barriers on the land and the placement of enemies, and as such is one of the better takes on the theme. Very good entry. Could use a little less of the “cheap” shots from enemies leaving the screen, though 
Son Las Dos Menos Cinco De La Tarde Strike!, or 1:55 PM Strike!, is jakman4242‘s entry in Session 5 of Shmup-Dev‘s rapid prototype sessions. There’s a marketing lesson in game titles here 
Game play involves switching your ship between a tank and an airplane, in order to combat the land and air enemies respectively. The game feels very smooth, and has a nice, fast pace. It’s a straight forward approach, pretty standard play. My only complaint is I don’t feel like the theme (Air and Land) was adequately used. With the exception of the boss, I never felt compelled to switch my ship much.
Still, there are some nice touches, like shading on the rotor sprites. Some time on level design and maybe slowing it down a bit would certainly help. A nice first entry for jakman4242.
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