The more difficult ones with many bullets are also known as “bullet hell”, “danmaku”, …
Now I think Unity has made it much easier to create a good shmup.
I’ve thought that people would start to create more such quality shmups, where one or more parts are polished: Beautiful 2d graphics, stunning 3d effects, great enemy design, movement, superb bullet patterns, story and whatever you can think of.
But so far I’ve almost only found shmups that were simple or created purely for demonstrating some parts of Unity.
It also seems like that nobody has developed a nice editor (inside unity), where you can design your levels and bullets instead of coding or scripting them.
The point is, I’d like to start a project developing a shmup and a simple editor myself, though, somehow I start feeling like there wouldn’t be much interest for both of them.
What do you think? Is there any interest / potential for such a game/editor? Where are the shmups?
Another issue is they don’t suit mobile gameplay. If you play some of the mobile shmups like Bug Princess you’ll see that the game mechanics don’t work well on a touch screen.
But if you can think of a way to modify the mechanics for mobile, you’d probably have a lot of copycats.
Every now and then i’ve been thinking to start a shmup project, and i actually have some notes how it could be possible to make some nice enemy patterns. For some reason, i have never even done any proto… not even most simple one with some sine pattern. I dunno, perhaps if there was editor plugin / starterkit? Then again, perhaps its because i want to make bullet hell with colorful fxs and beautiful enemy patterns with nice graphics, so there is no point to make any proto for spawning spheres and moving a cube up and down
Though the XenoRaptor forum post is old and boring, check out xenraptor.net for some visuals. XenoRaptor has a playable demo for Windows, Mac or Linux sitting right there in the download page. Be warned, it’s not done yet though.
In XenoRaptor - you play a robotic dinosaur in space, shooting down flying chainsaws and teleporting bears. That this man is not rich is a crime against developmanity.
Oh ye of little faith and weak google-fu. Why would someone build an editor when they can enhance their life and times with such works of inspired genius as… BulletML.
I’m sorry, but your post is confusing to me. That would be because you said “sell” and “mobile” in the same sentence (almost). People don’t sell games on mobile, at least not to make any real money. Free to play games with in-app purchases are the only way to go unless you have a ridiculous amount of money for advertising.
So…what about the free shooter games? I have a great one on my iPad called “Toon Shooters” and the controls are great! The rest that I’ve played do not have good controls.
Zanac is the best shooter ever IMHO. It was on the NES. Gradius is great but has nothing on it.
What I was trying to say is that bullet-hell shooters, like Ikaruga, generally don’t sell very well. It’s a niche market. A game like Toon Shooters might sell well enough but I personally wouldn’t consider it a shmup of the same style as Ikaruga, Parodius, etc.
I mentioned mobile because I think that is a big chunk of the potential audience for games. The shmups I’ve tried on iPhone have been finger dragging to move the ship (which blocks a bug chunk of the screen) and auto-fire. For someone who plays shmups, that is exactly what you don’t want. I realise not every game needs to ship on mobile, but without mobile you have to sell a lot more on PC. Again, this is for high production value shooters like Ikaruga or similar.
Personally, I wouldn’t want to work on a game as an indie and not have mobile as an option. That’s just my point of view. But, if you could adapt shmups to the game mechanics that work on mobile touch screens, I think you’d see a lot more indie Unity shmup projects.
So, generally low sales figures plus the difficulty of making traditional shmups work on touch screens (which limits sales potential further) means a lack of shmups.
I love hardcore shmups so please, make a great shmup and prove me wrong!
Yeah I wish the auto-fire could be done differently. On Toon shooters the controls “drag” but there’s no visible d-pad so you can put your fingers anywhere. I think it works really well.
I’ve been working on one in my spare time over the last few months. I call it Endless Reach, and I expect to release it for Windows Phone and PC around the end of the month, with iOS and Android versions shortly thereafter.
First things first, Endless Reach is a 2.5D shooter that places you in control of a powerful starfighter charged with cleansing the Reach of an evil alien race. The game will feature 10 exciting levels, 6 different enemy types, 5 visually stunning fire modes with an overload feature, and a high-quality techno soundtrack by local Atlanta artist, Shiny Baubles.
Endless Reach features a dynamic spawn combat system; such that the more enemies you kill, the more enemies get spawned. Basic gameplay has you avoiding enemies, for the most part, until you begin collecting power-ups. Each power-up will increase your fire rate, up to a maximum of five times. Collecting the fifth power-up triggers Limit Break mode, a 15 second firing frenzy that not only destroys everything in it’s path, but also provides you with a shield that prevents all damage. Limit Break mode comes at a price, however, as after 15 seconds your ship will begin to overload, requiring a purge. A successful purge (tap/click the center of the screen) will release a massive explosion, destroying all enemies in the blast radius. Fail to hit the button at the appropriate time, and your ship will collapse into itself, ending your mission!
You can view an older video of the gameplay while it was in beta last month below
Unlike 2d platform games which for some reason have continued to develop and have original concepts added, the same doesn’t seem to be true for shootemups. There have been a few with some nice graphics and shader effects etc but I’m not sure there’s really been a lot of creative development. Also I’m wondering if they used to be kind of a nerdy hardcore game genre and all the mostly guys that used to play them have evolved into far more intense first-person shooters and the like, which makes them look kind of boring in comparison. I really wish someone would do something original with a shootemup, but unfortunately what I mostly see are really boring movement patterns, predictable waves, end of level boss, various weapons bla bla bla… a bit kind of formulaic. And often the spaceship is just not as engaging as, say, a character in a platform game. So maybe they tend to be a bit cold and dull and harder to relate to? Plus they’re really a super-solo experience most of the time and things have become a lot more social in gaming in general so they maybe represent a genre frozen in time that hasn’t moved on very well. Anyone agree?
The most entertaining games are multiplayer to me, in my eyes if a game doesn’t have a online play feature it’s almost not worth looking at. I’ve felt this way since muds and old bbs games though and obviously there are tons of popular single player games that are still made.
Its not out yet but it does look good and it tries to be original, will see when it’s out. Also it is made in Unity they talked about it within their blog somewhere.
Looks like all the rest tbh … slightly different graphics style. But when you look past the graphics styling, look at how the ships move, what you have to do, it’s the same old game. … pretty basic pre-scripted enemy movement paths, they move as if you don’t even exist, and keep on moving on the same path no matter where you go or what you do. Then they emit slow-moving bullets (?) which travel in a straight line - yawn… To me this is one of the main areas and reasons why shmups remain stuck in the past, and it’s that the same formula keeps getting repeated. There needs to be a lot more advancement in the AI, a lot more interactivity … just making some alien sprites move along a pre-designated path is not engaging. It’s way too much on rails. I think maybe that’s why platform games have survived better, because they offer puzzle elements and interactions with enemies that have some kind of AI behavior, and stuff happens much more dynamically and unexpectedly which keeps it interesting. That drifting woods game, and indeed most other modern shmups also, all seem to be basically the same game when you look past the appearances.
I believe the OP was asking if there was good shmups made with Unity, so that was one XD
About the game i’m not sure you got further than watching the video, read the gameplay part. I think they try to add some originality but we will have to wait to really see in the end.
There is a lot of player who actually like the simple AI, the point for most of this games is to learn the patterns. In the most difficult levels its usually just impossible to survive unless you know everything that will happen. It’s part of the scrolling shooter type. It’s almost like asking a platformer but with no jumps (i might exaggerate a bit :p)
I think you might prefer beat-'em-up or, within the Shoot 'Em Up family, you have the run and gun like Metal Slug which usually feature a bit more complex AI and gameplay.
There’s still a fan base for classic scrolling shooter, lots of players missing games like U.N Squadron or even R-Type, those games were mostly dead after 3D arrive and those “bullet hell” like Ikaruga. There is a lot of old genre trying to come back (divinity original sin / Pillar of eternity want to revive the Baldur’s gate fan base for example), it’s good to see some independent working on Shoot 'Em Up, i’m tired of seeing platformer after platformer with more or less puzzles… I hope they will come up with something nice.
We have a schmup in the loops that we call “1993 Space Machine”. (The title comes from the fact that we put it on ice that year and never finished it - until now. But with Unity and for modern systems.)
You can check it out here.
It’s ‘real retro’ as all the graphics, level design and music has been kept intact for 22 years in a cardboard box and rediscovered last year. It was originally intended for the Amiga 500 and we had incorporated a 4 player co-op mode via a specially designed adapter that plugged into the Amiga. We now aim for a spring release.
To Imaginaryhuman I’d like to say that your description of the shoot em up genre is what I like about it. Yes it’s simple mechanics and yes repetitive. But to me it’s a thrill to discover the new levels, the bosses and the armor that awaits. Also I’m a total fan of the sci fi style found in most schmups.
Our company Nekki is about to publish a mobile bullet hell shmup by the midst of 2015. The indie developer 2Players, with whom we teamed up, utilizes Unity. The game is called Beat Da Beat which also points to fact that the onscreen-action is synched with dubstep-tracks from various artists like J-Broadway, Waterflame or TheBiocide. You can find more on it here: http://beat-the-beat.com/
Our company 