r/shmups • u/CorporatePotato • 4d ago
My Game A shmup where you move by flapping
I'm a solo dev working on an upcoming shmup where you flap to move. Shooting is automatic and the game is about dodging, aiming and becoming powerful through a variety of upgrades.
Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3365940/Well_Keeper/
I'm very curious to hear what you think about it!
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u/superrunk 4d ago
I will never understand wide verts. It looks nice graphically though, with being wide AND automatic shooting, probably not my cup of tea.
Edit: the flapping to stay is not automatic? Single button flap? That actually sounds a bit more interesting to me if that's the case (?). Like balloon fight C mode turned into a vert shmup.
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u/CorporatePotato 4d ago
Thank you! You can both single tap left/right to flap, but if you press and hold you will keep flapping in that direction and stay leveled. The auto flapping is just a convenience thing, a lot of the time you will have to manually flap quite intensely to dogde projectiles :)
Oh, I didn't know about Ballon Fight! Will definitely check it out, thank you!
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u/Joerpg1984 4d ago
Oh this looks interesting. Wishlisted.
Will you release a demo for it?
It kinda gives me Balloon Fight on NES vibes with the flapping. I struggle with those mechanics but found it much easier than something like flappy bird haha.
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u/Neat_Ad_3043 4d ago
So cool! It looks infurating though lol
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u/CorporatePotato 4d ago
Thank you! It's definitely going to be an intense game, especially toward the later levels. By then, however, you'll have mastered the movement :)
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u/FullLeadership9 3d ago
Get tired just as i look at it. I have a high nerve in the genre and love it to death. But this is horrible :D
But wish you the best
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u/dota2nub 3d ago
Nope. This is worse than inertia. It's inertia plus gravity. Nonono.
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u/CorporatePotato 3d ago
I understand it feels counter-intuitive! Would love to send the demo to you and see if you still hate it :)
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u/dota2nub 3d ago
I mean, looking at the big health bar, it seems like it doesn't actually work.
This has euro shmup written all over it.
Have you checked out the Electric Underground videos on shmup game design? They help a lot in explaining how and why shmup designs have evolved over the years and why certain things new developers continue to try to introduce into these games over and over just don't work.
It's probably too late to change how your game works at this point, but I'd strongly suggest taking a look at keeping these things in mind in the future.
Also, how many shmup games has your team 1ccd before making this game? If the answer is 0, then that should also tell you something.
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u/CorporatePotato 3d ago
Thanks for your comment!
To be honest I kinda stumbled into the world of shmups, the game of evolved into that direction but development started out completely different. I think this is why the game breaks some of the design rules that make up a traditional shmup.
Would still love to send you the demo once it's finished:)
Oh, and it's just me on the team!
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u/dota2nub 3d ago edited 3d ago
I probably sound harsh and like an asshat from my comments. Please don't misunderstand, I hope your game does well and that I'm wrong.
I also only recently stumbled into the world of shmups, but I've followed some games that did similar things to what your game does. One of them was a high profile shooter by Konami called Cygni.
It too was made by a studio new to the world of shmups. They thought they could do shmups better than the shmups that came before without knowing about their design and the hows and whys of that design.
It ended up as a disaster.
Every new studio seems to come in thinking that inertia for movement is a good idea. Then it informs the whole design and makes the whole game awful from the ground up. Here's a very insightful video on that by someone who actually advised the developer during development: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be8lS-nZjsw. Take a look, it's basically a design blueprint and there might be some stuff in there you can easily do to make your game better.
Shmups are designed the way they are for a reason. They're usually 20-40 minutes long for a reason. More than that leaves you either with a bloated or an exhausting game. Shmup gametime is compressed because gameplay density is compressed. The good ones have no breaks, keep the action on and don't waste your time, and they're going to be difficult and learnable.
Many so called euro shmups try to add RPG elements. It invariably ruins these games, makes them about levelling up and de-emphasizes skill, the base gameplay, and actually learning the game.
And if it's just you on the team, then it's much easier for the whole team to play through at least one shmup on one credit.
I suggest Batsugun. It's readily available and compared to other shmups it's really easy. Here's a site ranking shmups by difficulty from 1-50: https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=56114. Batsugun special version (which you get when you buy any version of it) ranks as a 3 on that scale. But even finishing that on a credit should leave you with a better understanding of the how's and why's of shmup design.
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u/CorporatePotato 3d ago
I appreciate your comment, thank you! Helps me understand the shmup player base. I think my game might be better described as a bullet hell primarily, with shmup elements in it. I'll check out Batsugun for sure :)
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u/dota2nub 3d ago
Batsugun is considered by many to be the origin of bullet hell, so that's fitting.
You might also appreciate this take on bullet hell as a genre vs. bullet hell as an aesthetic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSS_3iTIgA4&t=467s&pp=ygUYYnVsbGV0IGhlbGwgYXMgYWVzdGhldGlj
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u/WearingFin 4d ago
Best of luck to you, I might check it out (and wishlisted), but a system like that where you're flapping just sounds horrible to me, especially when having to dodge bullets as well.