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[benb]

Star Crisis is a shmup just recently in development. You can see a very early concept prototype (called JetTrek) here: http://www.excaliburstudios.com/flash/jettrek/

A couple mockups to start off with:






The unique aspect of this shmup is that you only play with two buttons (thruster, ray gun). This limits you to only vertical movements, but I've found the gameplay is both challenging and addicting. Also, instead of getting "lives," you simply have one life, but three hits. You can replenish your hearts by destroying certain enemies/obstacles.

Right now I have a plan laid out for 4 levels of increasing difficulty. It's being implemented in flixel (for Flash) and X-flixel (for XNA), so I plan to have it playable on both platforms.

[s0]

So a bit like the Canabalt of shmups? Count me in! 

[mokesmoe]

So it's the helicopter game with guns?
Awesome.

[Inanimate]

This sounds intriguing! Can't wait to see more of it!

[Maxim Schoemaker]

Omg! Score:1550

I love the style and the feel =^,^=
Am I right in saying that you can only destroy the first kind of enemy? Or did I just not hit the others often enough? xD

[mokesmoe]

I missed the demo link before. Fun game.
You can destroy the big rocks for extra health. Takes a lot of bullets though.

[s0]

I love the style and the feel =^,^=

Yeah, the controls feel really good, which is, in my opinion, the most important thing for an actio game. Like the graphics and music too, there's really nothing much wrong with it at this point.

Keep going! 

[benb]

A sampling of the graphics I've been working on:



I am by no means a skilled pixel artist, so keeping it simple is the way to go in this project.

[Ben Kuhn]

Nice and clean and simple. Also, I could swear I heard a snatch of "still alive" in the music. The melody of "anyway this cake is great, it's so delicious and moist". Is that intentional?

Oh, and one more thing - there's essentially no disadvantage to firing continuously, so making your players mash the C button is practically insulting. Can you make it auto-repeat when held down?

[benb]

Also, I could swear I heard a snatch of "still alive" in the music. The melody of "anyway this cake is great, it's so delicious and moist". Is that intentional?

Wow. I see what you mean, but no, it wasn't intentional. Previous to today, I've only heard Still Alive once (the one time I played through Portal ), and that was some time ago.

Can you make it auto-repeat when held down?

Yeah, that is definitely a change I plan to make in the full game. It didn't occur to me at the time I built the prototype, because I wasn't really thinking "shmup" at first, even though that's what it turned out to be.

[alspal]

With shoot 'em ups, you usually get 3 lives which basically means 3 health (unless you play the western shoot 'em ups which are usually checkpoint based), so you're not really doing anything abnormal there.

I think it would be nicer to feel like you've been hit when you get hit (like playing a some sort of animation or something) as just having the player flashing doesn't really do enough at the moment.

[BinaryMind]

Looking good. A nice simple game that doesn't require more than 4 seconds of commitment. I'm assuming you're going with the high score, one level thing for the final game?

[benb]

There will be 4 levels in the final version, but I've been thinking about including a pure "score-attack mode" that's simply a procedurally-generated infinite level (basically what the prototype is now).

[BinaryMind]

Nice, I'll play both modes if time allows you to make the other one.

[benb]

It's been two weeks, so probably time for another update. I now have an actual gameplay shot, and there are two levels complete (of the four planned).

Also, after hearing what SoulEye did for VVVVVV (not to mention the other excellent samples on his web site), I had to get a soundtrack from him. My budget's on the small side, but he was great and willing to work within my limits. I uploaded the Level 1 theme to YouTube as an example:



Also, I've decided to go ahead and include an "endless/score attack" mode.

[Stegersaurus]

Wow, I didn't even realize this was made with X-flixel. I've been wanting to try that myself for future projects. Lookin nice so far!

[benb]

Level 3, the asteroid belt, is nearing completion:




Oddly, one of the things I'm most proud of in my past week's work are the nice-looking moon rocks. They looked pretty horrible when I started out. I knew they'd look better with shading, so ultimately I went for the shaded look and disabled rotation for them.

It's actually kind of difficult to design a 2-button shmup that contains the proper amount of play challenge without making some of the enemy attacks seem cheap. When you can only move up/down, maneuverability becomes far too hard/frustrating if you make the mistake of going for the total "bullet hell" feel... so you have to approach the design from a different perspective altogether.