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(2 edits)

Tons of good, tons of bad.

Simple, but very polished. overall great job for a first submission.

i don't wanna sit down a write a megapost on why your shump is bad from a design standpoint, because shmups are super niche, and in my opinion you shouldn't cater to that crowd in general

my question is, who is this game for? if this game is for shmup fans, this game is very VERY bad for multiple reasons.

if this game is a casual experience, or even just a test project to hone your skills, it's very good

if you are not catering to shmups fans, lose the ship as your player design and think something else (for ex, I've chosen knight). Some people did anime girls, cute animals... anything you want is better than a spaceship. Sadly spaceship are boring for the costumer if it's not a shmup fan. I dunno the lore of your game, but since this is a "warmind" an andorid/robot/robomaid waifu of anykind can be a thousand times better for your general appeal.

the main cannon that you aim with your mouse has a reason to exist only if piercing. i will talk more about the gun aiming, it's the only bad design i'll explain:

1 - mouse aiming let's you stand still in a safe spot and shoot down everthing. this can lead to very boring gameplay. This is vary bad, you need to keep the player moving around

2 - if you wanna dev a shmup with a gun that you aim, you should design challenges that use that mechanic. I need to have a reason to have a gun i can manually aim and dosen't just shoot forward. I'm talking about wave design, and enemies/bullets

3 - with this setup a controller is very hard to do well(again who is your player? does he play with a keyboard?). if you wanna go for a twinstick experience, player's aim will be very poor, so your man shoot should be a lot bigger to be useful in combat.

4 - a classic design flaw is to not "give a reason to not push a button". shotgun has a very long cd, so you click it when you need it, its hitbox is very strict, you can go pointblank and oneshot a boss, or go long range for a crowd control. it's a good design. (of course almost all old shmups had a fire button that you held down or rapidfire like raiden. that stuff it's just nostalgia)

random thoughts:

- i like the power setup a lot.

- shotgun is ver very powerful, and fun to use.

- folder and subfolder of your game should have a version, so we can recognize them (dd you used in the main folder is also fine)

- change the color for weapons/subsystems when they are in range of a socket. in general check path of exile/diablo/other arpg to have an idea on how to do your juice

- i like the art (care about ai accusations)

- ui for your slow can/should be a circle around your ship, see crimzon clover for a visual input


Good Job and GL!

(+1)

You raise a lot of good points I'm also wondering about.

I'm aiming for a wider, casual audience. I'd like the game to appeal to hardcore shmup players, and there'll certainly be ways to flex that skillset, but the overall design will lean towards ARPG mechanics and build customization. So the intention is part exploration in the vein of Star Control 2, part Path of Exile-style ridiculous build minmaxing, part twitch shmup gameplay. As such I'm pulling inspiration from all over the place and I'm not too concerned about genre conventions.

> lose the ship

The ships will be craftable and the player is expected to swap them often. I agree that currently it's not very exciting. Lore-wise, the fact that the forms you use are not human shaped is part of the vibe I'm going for, so I want to see if I can make it work despite the problems you mention.

> mouse & controller aiming

Good point about forcing player movement. I'd like for the offense to be more active, so DPS checks can to an extent be cleared with player skill instead of raw firepower. I've been thinking about directional damage reduction for enemies and/or optimal ranges.

Classic shmups are built the way they are out of necessity, given the controllers available at the time. I'm messing around to see if I can get something interesting by mixing in mechanics from dual stick shooters, survivorlikes etc, but it's possible I'll drop all that and go back to a basic shmup setup, with directional weapons + auto-aiming turrets, perhaps angle-restricted.

Gamepad aiming is a huge issue and I'm unsure where I'm going with this. Ideally I'd like the game to be playable with a dual stick setup, which would require either some kind of aim assist for the turret or, as you said, a wide cone of fire.

> reason not to push a button

The next version will have stronger and more resource-limited weapons, for now I wanted to explore a few basic designs.

Thanks for the in-depth review, I appreciate it!