Imperial Walker Arcade - a game prototyp

A place for people with an interest in developing new shmups.
Post Reply
Axoma
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2022 7:42 pm

Imperial Walker Arcade - a game prototyp

Post by Axoma »

Hi there! I'd like to share with you my actual side-project. The story behind is a bit twisted, so just a few words of introduction. At the beginning I wanted to make something similar to Silkworm game that I played so many times on Amiga. I wanted to keep the general simple concept but use modern visuals. I focused on the jeep gameplay, since I thought a ground moving vehicle is less popular on side-scroller shooters. Finally, instead of a car, I made a walker, which definitely came from my love to Star Wars (of course episodes 4-6 only :>). During the development cycle I decided to abandon the original fire mechanics from Silkworm, i.e. firing only forwards and upwards. I ended up with the popular twin-stick shooter mechanic. So the final outcome is now a bit far away from the original inspiration, but sill I think it is more interesting that way.

For now I have a playable prototype of my "Imperial Walker Arcade". Currently there is only one level - somehow, even if not visible at first glance, inspired by wave 04 of Silkworm. You can download the game at itch.io (link below). I'm looking for a feedback, I wonder if such game is interesting enough. Is it too easy or too hard? What will make it more interesting? There are of course some things I want to add, primarily many weapons and upgrades, and of course a lot of levels. But I don't know what direction to go further. Make it a rouge like, like the Silkworm was, or rather make it less punishing - like e.g. Tyrian, where you can repeat the same level until you succeed, or do something in between. I also do not want to turn it into bullet hell (since I suck at it and still want be able to play), so it's gonna be rather a chill game available for not high skilled players.

I will be very grateful for you feedback, inspiring ideas and of course criticism.

Link to the game: https://axoma-games.itch.io/imperial-walker-arcade

You can also watch a very short gameplay video clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhnFIB_QO2I

Thanks for your patience - it turned into a quite a long post...
User avatar
heli
Posts: 585
Joined: Fri Sep 13, 2019 3:58 pm

Re: Imperial Walker Arcade - a game prototyp

Post by heli »

Looking to the game it seems in slow-motion.
*My game increases speed with difficulty, hint.
User avatar
Verticen
Posts: 87
Joined: Fri Oct 11, 2019 4:57 pm

Re: Imperial Walker Arcade - a game prototypEEEEEEEEE

Post by Verticen »

I got a chance to play your game a bit, and played though it. I see the Silkworm influence. I’ve actually played Silkworm in an arcade, but never any home ports. It’s my understanding though, that the Amiga conversion was widely considered quite good, or even superior to the arcade game. The Amiga title music is classic too.

Also, if you’re still in the Amiga community, there’s this new side-scrolling shmup called Boss Machine in development that you should know about.

Your game is pretty balanced, though a bit on the easy side. In your case, I think that you’re better off designing this game as a chill, easier experience, with a number of cool levels, than trying to design rolling gunner on stilts. Don’t try to design a shooting game you don’t feel near good enough to clear; you can scale damage values later for more experienced players. I’d recommend avoiding a rougelike game and go with a more traditional 5-8 stage affair. With the rougelike idea in mind though, I think your game could like, have the order of the first ~4 stages randomized like in Psikyo games or selectable like in Battle Bakraid, if you think that would keep the game fresh. ~4 random stages + ~2-3 good ‘Final’ stages in a solid 25-40 minute main campaign experience if you think about players restarting a few times for failing some of the later levels.

Controls are fine enough, but I do demand joystick support added. Yeah, the game is designed for mouse and keyboard, but I was kind of disappointed I couldn’t have my left hand on my arcade stick for mech walk control, and my right on my trackball mouse for aiming: a true arcade experience. You don’t have to worry about controller button mapping if you mapped jump to ‘right click’ (or middle mouse, mouse button [# > 2]). I imagine the Unity engine makes joysticks pretty easy to deal with, so you should be able to make joystick ‘←’ and ‘→’ alternatives to ‘A’ and ‘D’ without much struggle. Your average player will probably just use keyboard, but it is nice to have the option. Really, you should also consider a twin-stick analog controller option, but analog inputs could be a pain idk, so don’t worry too much about that yet.

Being a walker, the hitbox is higher above the ground than the jeep in Silkworm. I think that by pressing down ‘↓’ you should make the walker able to duck down to avoid getting shot. This could be an alternative to jet boosters when low on fuel. Maybe it can do this, but cannot walk while lowering down on its legs, briefly sacrificing its horizontal mobility for vertical mobility. Alternatively, maybe play around with adding a few more bullets, but also much more fuel gauge if you want the player to use the fly mechanic more.

I’d recommend you look at Sci-Fi Assault Mothership Beluga for some inspiration. I feel that game is somewhat similar to yours in a few ways, and it does what it does quite well. It’s a horizontal shmup with a mech that has unlimited flight, but gains anti-air missiles firepower when you land it on the ground.

Missiles are easily the biggest threat in the game, I think that you should make them easier to hit, and or easier to kill. When playing I felt that I had to prioritize killing missile and enemies that shot missiles over everything else, since missiles would usually account for most of my lost health. If you don’t want to nerf missiles, perhaps the mech could get a flares power-up that can be strategically used to lead away lots of incoming missiles.

I’d see about tossing around some alternative names. With the name ‘Imperial Walker’ and the sci-fi setting I could see someone thinking your game was linked with the Star Wars IP. The ‘Walker’ part is fine if you want to keep it, that makes sense, but what makes it Imperial anyway? The more distance you put between yourself and a lawsuit with the Disney Megacorp, the better imho. I think you could probably come up with a more unique, attention-grabbing adjective to describe your walker anyway.

I can’t speak much on how the game performs. I ran this game in wine, which I was able to get working, but it should be noted that to run with wine, the game needs:
- a 64 bit wine prefix (modern Unity does not support 32 bit)
- glibc version 2.26 or higher to fix Unity black screen issue
I had audio stuttering, but this issue could be chocked up to wine’s libraries or my somewhat weak hardware. This isn’t important if you just want to design the game for Windows platform, but if you’re wanting to port this to Steam Deck/OS this info could be useful.
heli wrote:Looking to the game it seems in slow-motion.
*My game increases speed with difficulty, hint.
Silkworm played a bit slower, but got difficult enough without speeding up. It just throws unreasonable amounts of enemies at you. This game does similar with missiles sometimes.

My High Score: 28,800
lol text wall. gud luck :P
Post Reply