Where are the shmups?

Hi

So where are the shmups (shmup = shoot'em up) developed with Unity?

I don't mean your first demo space shooter project or the one that is in the tutorial section, but shmups like..

Ikaruga https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPx-oznzdTs
Mushihimesama https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktKJu_mWatY
Parodius https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poYXjPoh5G4
Gradius V https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxJjwsHYDIs
Pop'n Twinbee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9vh3nTdMhw
Progear https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2Mws0cPeXY

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?

 

There's Warblade MK II, though it hasn't had a lot of progress lately due to the author being ill.

--Eric

 

They don't sell very well, unfortunately.

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

 

Coming from an arcade background as a kid, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for upright shooters

I would love to build one one day when I have more time. But right now I have other projects I am focused on.

And screw mobile, I would make it PC/Mac/Console only. You can't beat the old school keys or controller for a shooter.

 

I see from your examples that you're one of those shmup elitists that think twin-stick shooters don't count (you racist).

Regardless though, here's a couple of good options done in Unity:
Assault Android Catctus
XenoRaptor

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.

 

Yeah, my post was sloppy.

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!

 

No worries - Unity shmup community has you covered: Mighty Tactical Shooter


Maybe the iOS controller API will usher in a glorious new golden age of mobile shmup? Personally, I doubt it very much.

 

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

Also, some more current screenshots:









I plan to release at a $.99 price point, with a free demo version available.

 

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.

 

You want to see a good shootemups : http://www.drifting-lands.com/

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.

 

A anti shmup could be cool were you place enemies and have them try and kill a OP single NPC.

 

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 )

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.

 

It is called a TOWER DEFENCE game.

 

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.

 

Here!

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/

 

The decline of shmups went hand-in-hand with the decline in arcades. The shmup was a genre tailor-fit for arcades, and was able to flourish in that environment. With the collapse of the arcade economic model, the shmup has simply receded into a very niche genre. Also, many experiences that people often gravitated to shmups for became integrated into other genres. (timing, challenge, memorization, etc...)

I think there is still plenty of potential in the genre. But in order to tap into that potential developers will have to borrow elements from other modern genres and integrate them into the shmup's design.

 

You fell for a necro-bump to promote their own game!

 

Well, I do feel it's a pretty interesting subject. I've enjoyed some shmups in my day. Galaga is still one of my all-time favorite arcade games. (and I like me some classic arcade games)

I think it would be neat to have annual arcade-challenge development competitions for students. Thinking about what makes a good arcade game is a fun mental exercise. It's also a segment of the industry that saw a lot more stability and refinement over the years. (being one of the first large-scale applications of game design)

Unity is a pretty good platform for this, especially after they started supporting Linux. Assembling an arcade from scratch is more expensive if you have to foot the bill for an operating system on top of the hardware. Of course, the rise of micro-computer devices like the Amazon Fire TV and the OUYA make things even simpler. (and cheaper) Designing a Unity arcade game with one of those low-spec devices in mind would be great!

 

I think maybe one of the failings of shmups is that they've stayed very locked into their genre and haven't evolved much. Gaming has become a lot more social and most shmups are still single-player reflex games. You'd be hard pressed to find many 2-play or multi-player shmups at all. I can barely think of any. So they've sort of stayed in a box of isolation, and this is partly also why almost every shmup people make still stays heavily confined in a box that copies everything that was done already. You can switch out the graphics and animation but still the same basic structure and gameplay seems to find its way into every game. After a while you see through that illusion... same game, different wrapper.

 

@imaginaryhuman basically nailed it I think. In general, I see the evolution of games as being mainly 80% focus on graphics, 20% on everything else. Shmups make this more obvious probably than any other genre. The other genres get away with it but it is much harder for shmups to hide because the amount of interaction and objectives are so limited.

Enemies are basically brainless moving in simple patterns rarely reacting to the players presence. The same can be said of most platform games (and heck many games from other genres for that matter) but the difference is the player has more choices available. You can jump, perhaps climb, you may do a close combat attack (even if just jumping on an enemy's head) or a range attack, you can often jump and/or duck to avoid being hit and so forth. Compared to shmups platformers offer a huge amount of choices. A greater number of ways to interact with the game world.

Shmups basically rely on movement and firing only. This would be enough to make a great game I think but as @imaginaryhuman pointed out the enemies are the same thing we have seen thousands of times before. Sure they may look different. They may be bright and shiny HD and 3D but that is just the fluff part. Nearly all of them float across the screen in fixed patterns often completely unaware of the player. One may come out, move 1/4 of the way across the screen stop and fire twice then continue on. Another may do the stop and fire pattern every 1/3 of the screen it moves. Another may move across in a straight line firing every 2 seconds. Another comes out in a wave pattern and so forth.

Like I said, the evolution of shmups is basically the perfect example of focusing on graphics and audio (and perhaps cinematic as in those little in-game videos) improvements and nothing else. As the years passed these games just threw out more crap on screen. But it was better looking crap. Better sounding crap.

I always liked shmups. Some mindless blowing up of enemies is fun for a bit. I have a little side project that I started a couple weeks ago that is a shmup. I think they can be a very cool game it is just that every developer is stuck in the same pattern.

Send out some mindless pattern based enemies. That is fine. But then send out some intelligent enemies. Give enemies roles. Maybe you catch up to an enemy that is flying back and forth collecting power cells. It has a purpose. Then give it some guards. 4 to 5 heavily shielded enemies that fly around behind it engaging you while also trying to take everything you are throwing out. If that gatherer enemy collects 10 cells it flies off screen. It got away. At another point maybe you find a couple friendly ships that are attacking an enemy base and taking heavy damage. You need to defend them and help destroy that base. Stuff like that. Then focus on the interaction. Give the player a shield button in addition to the fire button. Give them a certain amount of energy that takes a bit of time to replenish. It is a choice. Attack or shield. Add more interaction to the game. If shield is on and you collide with an enemy you send it flying back across the screen if it collides with an enemy (or two or three) they all explode. Maybe the player can send out some kind of mines that attach to enemy ships and explode also taking out any enemies that are very close to that one.

Shmups are probably the one genre where there is room for a lot of improvement and it would be fairly easy to make a game that really stands out.

 

There's one here

 

How come no one mentioned Skyforce? I thought it really a good game, at least it keeps me playing till I maxed out the upgrades, and defeat the final boss...and I got bored easily with other game usually...

 

You did an excellent job on this. The game really pulled me in. This would be an excellent combat and mission game for wrapping some kind of "space sim build a colony expand conquer the universe" game around. I only reached Commander (actually Cmdr. I think it said) rank but it was a lot of fun.

 

Actually the more I think about it the biggest issue I think with shmups is just the whole emphasis on graphics and throwing more and more crap on the screen. I think designers would do well to play some NES shmups. There are many great games with some of my favorites being Life Force, Abadox and Legendary Wings. See how they made the games so interesting despite the lack of great graphics & sounds or the ability to flood the screen with sprites. Most of these games also use simple pattern-based enemies but they combine that with terrain-based obstacles in interesting ways to make very challenging and fun games.

For those who are not retro gamers and may not realize it this... you can play these games right online in your browser... hang on a second... here you go:

Abadox

Life Force

Legendary Wings

There are many more good games to play. Seriously, take a look at these ultra low tech shmups from 25 years ago and see how many interesting challenges and solid game play they packed into them compared to more modern shmups which look fantastic and fill the screen with crap.

Sure some of them are quite easy (it's a shmup which means your eyeballs should be glued to your ship nearly all the time) but still a worthy challenge and good amount of game play from only a few sprites being on-screen at any one time.

 

Tyrian is another older shmup that now runs in the browser thanks to the Emscripten port of DOSBox. It was really fun for me despite the fact that my 80386 barely ran it on the lowest settings.

http://www.smart-page.net/tyrian/

 

I don't recall ever playing Tyrian. My favorite DOS shmup I think was probably Raptor: Call of the Shadows. The sequel Demonstar was quite good too. It is hard to choose any one as the best because there were many very good games back in the DOS days. They were still fairly limited on the graphics so put more thought into level design and game play. Anyway, thanks for sharing that I will check it out right now.

 

Ah heck I completely forgot about this game. As soon as the title screen came up I recognized it. It's good although I think this was probably around the point when they started putting more focus on graphics and throwing out a lot of stuff on screen. It's probably a great example of the transition between the older style shooters and modern shooters. A kind of middle of the road connecting the two styles. Excellent upgrade system. It's a challenging game for sure. Episode 1 was easy. Episode 2 really kicked it up.

 

Don't ever think of playing DOS version of Tyrian, when whole game was made freeware and there's great Windows port of it (and Linux, and Mac, take a note, UT: THAT'S how you are doing porting) which runs great and have that retro feel despite offering modern features such as optional filters or support for modern controllers.

 

This is an HTML5 port (well, okay the emulator is the actual thing ported). Still the entire point is to get a feel of how retro games did and you won't really get the full impression without running them as they were actually intended.

It isn't at all because it allows you to be lazy and not download it properly if you don't have a real interest in playing it.

 

It's great to see this thread, and the interest it is drawing.

I agree in part with most of the comments,
It is our intention also to look more closely at Unity for shmup making in the coming months.
There is definitely a challenge with a closet, perhaps non-existent market for these kinds of games.

I do think shmups can work on mobile.
With a little work these can play and feel pretty good on tablets to me.
I'm not hard hardcore, but I do have the guts to strive for a 1CC.
Strikers -Psikyo ports?
Pheonix HD?
Skyforce 2014?
I would have to assume there is money being made with these. Skyforce is on its 4 iteration?

I'd recommend you check out FullBlast, which I believe is created in Unity(I may be wrong) .

A good example of 2 indies creating a nice -more casual- shmup.
I'm not sure how successful it is doing, I hope it is making them some money.
Perhaps with ports for Ouya and WiiU.

Another game which may or may not be Unity, but certainly could be is Pythetron.

It certainly has the chops visually!

I hope you will forgive a bit of a cross post here.
We are running a shmupjam throughout all of 2015 and would love to see more Unity development in this area taking part.
You can check out more details on our jam in these posts..

Unity
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/shmupjam-01.288638/

TIGForums
http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=47261.0

I'd love to be part of any group exploring Unity's potential in this area.
Add us up on Skype: buko-studios

Cheers

--Forgot to also mention.. take a look at Dimension Drive, on its last week on Kickstarter!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2awesomestudio/dimension-drive

 

yeah shmup gameplay on mobile looks like challenging. And on-screen buttons doesn't solve the problem when playing on a small screen. Although the genre declined with video arcades, we can see gameplay derived from shmups today in many mobile games, in a simplifed form (!). There are many great unity games and assets already (and i have to shamelessly mention 80s Shoot'em Up Kit ). Some old shmups like Gradius or R-Type keeps me addicted till these days.

 

That Pythetron looks quite good, at least graphically.

 

It does have an excellent presentation. What I noticed and appreciated more was there seems to great level design, interesting enemy and obstacle design, above normal interaction and the obstacles can be destroyed by enemy fire. It actually looks like a very interesting game. I thought the Full Blast game while presented better than I could do looks like pretty basic level design, enemies and the normal limited interaction most shmups have. It looks like a great foundation but needs more oomph to stand out.

 

downloader doesnt work for mac tho

 

Pythetron looks amazing, like an evolution of old Amiga shmups.

 

I got it to download on mac using their 'alternative links'

 

Frontier Guard shmup is coming soon to Wii U.

http://www.indiedb.com/games/frontier-guard

 

Hey guys!

I'm thinking of porting Shmup God to Unity. I'm currently using OGRE to develop it and the development pipeline is taking too much time. The game is only about 30% completed and now would be a good time to make a decision, but as I placed it on IndieDB and it didn't receive any interest from gamers. I was wondering if anyone could help me out by pointing websites or what I should do to get feedback from shmup fans. I'm one of those fans and I prefer slower-paced shmups and, personally, prefer to play games having some of the features not seen before, that's why I started to develop Shmup God. Please take a look at the video and let me know what you think and what I should do to reach the audience. I'm at the crossroad now of postponing the development until the interest rises and fork into doing something else.

 

Looks pretty good, CoderGames. I would highly recommend moving to Unity. You development cycle, once you get a grasp on Unity, would be far quicker. I believe your end results would be better as well. I think a good path for you might be to apply for a Wii U Indie License. I am a Wii U developer making shmups also and it's a great market with lots of potential to reach a lot of people.

 

Thank Magique! But, the same problem is happening now here as well, developers commenting instead of gamers. I had the same problem on IndieDB. Only developers, artists and musicians commented. It's really hard to reach plain gamers on the Internet. I'm going to only release for PC Windows, the most widespread gaming platform on the planet. Everyone has one. I don't want to spend money on licensing, maybe if Shmup God or any other of my games becomes popular, then I might consider porting to some other system. Until then Windows is just fine for me.

 

I have to point out the obvious: Unity - being a game development tool - tends to attract game developers, and not exactly your "average" gamer so much. You may want to consider showing your work in some gaming communities like GameFAQs if you want that sort of feedback.

 

Thanks Asvarduil! I'll try there, I didn't know they had a community where developers can present their games.

 

They don't, exactly. A problem I notice in general is that developers and gamers typically get stuck in their own little silos (usually for good reasons, but cases like this are times that breaks down.)

What I suggest doing, is breaking out of that for the purposes of your project. Be honest, show your game, let that community give you feedback. Alternatively, GameJolt has a very good Dev-Dev, Gamer-Dev, and YouTuber-Dev community as well. It's another viable prospect for you.

Point is, the Unity Community is dominantly game developers, which is by design. As long as you go some place that gamers interact, you can get the feedback you need, and typically they're only too happy to oblige you.

 

Sometime in the 90's, the genre died. There are still fans out there, but not in any significant numbers. The genre is stale because games like Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga have done it all. It has literally all been done.

The modern gaming landscape has lots of games that fill the void left by shooters, and more.

Modern gaming is saying, you want to shoot stuff these days, try a first person shooter. Most of those offer more action, are generally multiplayer and give much more intense player experiences.

And I have to agree. They are more fun. :/

 

Absolutely not true. They didn't do it all. And the genre is not dead, just like the 3D platformer is not dead either.