Retrobooster

[mogumbo]

Hi everyone. I just met one of the forum mods tonight and he encouraged me to introduce my game here. I hope this is the right place for it. Looking around, I wish I had discovered this forum sooner so I could have posted in the development section.

My game is Retrobooster and I released it about a month ago. http://reallyslick.com/retrobooster/ It might not be a pure shmup because it concentrates on flying skill as much as shooting, but it does have an awful lot of shooting, bullet hell, and colorful explosions once you get far enough in.

My goal was to make a genuinely difficult skill-based cave-flyer with really detailed physics, gobs of beautiful explosions, and disgusting splatterable monsters (the splattering kicks in about halfway through the game). In my opinion, most modern cave flyers try to slow the flying down to cater to a more casual audience. The flying in this one is fast and responsive so that I could make battles where you have to constantly dodge enemy fire. Ultimately, the tougher flying makes for more exciting shooting. There are also some speed-flying challenges and a few puzzles (some very hard) to mix things up.

Anyway, I hope this qualifies as enough of a shmup to introduce it here. There is a trailer and free demo on the website. If you have any question or feedback I'm happy to chat.

[Dave_K.]

Welcome mogumbo! Always great to have more devs join the fourm.

I should probably point out that this "cave shooter" is actually a game that takes place in a cave, and nothing to do with Cave danmaku shooters. ..but still looks like quite the challenge.

[Lord Satori]

This game looks amazing! +1 for using "retro" in the name and not using retro styled graphics.

[Laurel_McFang]

Looks amazing. If I had a PC I would pick it up
Are you on greenlight yet?

[mogumbo]

Thanks everyone. Yeah, no "retro" or pixel graphics. I wanted something retro as in "old school," but figured this genre could work well with 3D graphics. And I didn't try to stylize the graphics much because there are gross levels later on in the game. It's hard to stylize gross and still have it look slimy and disgusting.

It's on Greenlight here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... d=95140416 Right now it's at 80% of the way to the top 100. So I guess there's a chance it can get there before they cancel Greenlight, but it will probably need another thousand votes or so.

[XoPachi]

This game looks amazing! +1 for using "retro" in the name and not using retro styled graphics.

CHRIST almighty can I get an amen? I get soooo sick of the nostalgia tugs.

[God]

This looks like a "what if shooters descended from Asteroids instead of Space Invaders?"

Maybe I'm just playing too much Salamander lately, but that purple eyeball thing at 0:49 looks kinda familiar.

[mogumbo]

Good analogy. I played a lot of Galaga back in the day, but I played way more Oids.

Never saw Salamandar until just now. Whoever made that really liked Aliens That's good stuff.

[SmashRiot]

Just wanted to say I really LOVE the particles in Retrobooster, and maybe the creepy mouth aliens too. Also, nice touch burning and pushing the survivors! Retrobooster is a fun romp!

[Pretas]

Has the developer played Sub-Terrania for Genesis/Mega Drive? I would consider that the most successful attempt to date at updating the Lunar Lander formula.

[mogumbo]

Thanks SmashRiot That stuff was fun to program, especially the particles. They required an interesting blend of movement, texture, and shaders.

Pretas, I actually never played Sub-Terrania but I want to now. Since announcing this game I've heard a lot of good stuff about both Sub-Terrania and Solar Jetman. I played a stupid amount of Asteroids on Atari 800 and Oids on Atari ST. There was also influence from Lunar Lander, Choplifter, Protector, Protector 2, Thrust, Forrt Apocalypse, and probably a bunch of other titles I can't think of right now. But I still tried to be as original as possible with the physics/control feel, level design, and visuals so it would be its own game.

[Blackbird]

I agree with the above posters, your game does appear to have a lot of similarities to the Genesis game Sub-Terrania. Perhaps you drew on a common source of inspiration. For comparison: Sample Sub-Terrania gameplay.

This game is most known for it's ball-busting difficulty and for having an awesome techno soundtrack by Jesper Kyd. Sick beats =D.

This is not a bad thing though - I think your game is stylistically distinct enough. The graphical style is much different for one. You might look to Sub-Terrania for some pitfalls to avoid. No crazy ideas about adding a fuel resource that depletes at an insane rate =P.

This is an odd questions, but what would you say the tone or theme of your game is? Looking at the trailer, the game appears tonally dissonant to me. In the trailer, the sounds of the ship firing remind me of retro shooters, like Gradius. The explosions are more sonically impacting, like a more modern first person shooter. The bright, colorful particle effects remind me of a modern retro homage like Geometry Wars. There are also effects that sound like human screams of terror or pain that could be right out of a horror game. Is the game supposed to dazzle us with particle effects? Is it intended to inspire us with the majesty of alien worlds like Gradius? Is it intended to horrify us like Resident Evil or R-Type? Right now it feels like a bit of everything to me, and I think the game would be stronger if it had a more unified, identifiable tone.

You mentioned that "splatterable monsters" were one of the selling points of the game, but I did not see any in the trailer (unless I'm just blind and missed them). If you feel like this is one of the big selling points of the game, I would definitely get it in there, because I want to see that!

[mogumbo]

Blackbird, I left fuel out of Retrobooster from the very start. That felt like a mechanic that everyone has seen enough of in this genre. Plus, I wanted to do flying challenges and puzzles that really don't work well in a game with limited fuel.

That's an interesting observation about the tone, and I don't believe I thought about this much during development. I was definitely prioritizing fun and challenging gameplay over tone and style. The central theme of the game is survival, which is supported by the difficult flying mechanic and gobs of crashes you will have while playing. However, I also wanted it to be old school arcady fun with a somewhat twisted sense of humor. That part is supported by super-powerful weapons, some gross levels (meat planets and such), and some implausible enemies like the mouth aliens that SmashRiot mentioned. The minimal story and screaming people are intended to support both sides of this game. But this blend it tricky to get right and I can see how it might not work for everyone. The particles are definitely meant to dazzle, which was a visual choice based solely on the fact that there would be soooo many explosions. I didn't want the same visual effects everyone has seen before.

It's possible I made a mistake leaving the splattering out of the trailer, but I always hate trailers that give everything away. I only hinted at that side of the game with the big eyeball in the trailer. If I end up regretting this too much I can always make a second trailer.

[Blackbird]

I'm with you. It's important to get the gameplay right first. Tone is like the finishing step of a game. Well integrated tone, narrative, and gameplay turn a good game into an exceptional one.

Hmmm... survival, but arcadey and with a twisted sense of humor... rather than "real horror" like R-Type, maybe a campy horror theme with some comedic elements like Resident Evil would be closer to the tone we're looking for? Like a B horror movie.

I guess I'm trying to reconcile the arcade element of bright, colorful explosions with the survival element of picking up frightened survivors and splattering enemies and I'm not sure that both of these should be in the same game. When I think of things that are both arcade and horror at the same time, I think of R-Type and Typing of the Dead, but neither of those use a bright color palette. Wait, I guess there is Deathsmiles. That's a pretty damn colorful horror game.

One other thing you mentioned was that crashing into enemy units was expected. Could this be an interesting mechanic in and of itself? Usually in cave shooters contact with anything damages you, but what if you were encouraged to ram things, and it actually gave you points? It could be pretty fun to collide with a bunch of stuff like a proverbial flying bowling ball, hitting a bunch of "pins" and sending them careening into the walls, where they of course splatter. Ramming things seems pretty horror.

[mogumbo]

I didn't try to give this game any sort of horror element. With the gross levels and splattering I was aiming for fun-gross rather than scary-gross.

Ramming enemies is encouraged with a 2X score multiplier. You can only do it a little without wiping out your shields, but when you get a shield power-up you can keep doing it until the power-up runs out.

[spadgy]

Looks interesting. Any plans for a Mac port for hipster Mac-using pricks like me?

[mogumbo]

OS X would be the easiest and first platform to port to, but that port depends on how well this game does financially on Windows and Linux. I haven't set a number for that yet, but it will need to be a lot better than it is doing now. The press hasn't exactly fallen in love with this game (reviews have ranged from above average to quite good, but there aren't enough of them), so at this point I think success depends mainly on the game finding its audience and getting good word-of-mouth support.

[Kollision]

This is awesome!
I'm a fan of Solar Jetman, Subterrania and all kinds of gravity arena shooters, so if this comes out on XBLA, PSN or Steam (I caved in ) I'll definitely get it.

[spadgy]

OS X would be the easiest and first platform to port to, but that port depends on how well this game does financially on Windows and Linux. I haven't set a number for that yet, but it will need to be a lot better than it is doing now. The press hasn't exactly fallen in love with this game (reviews have ranged from above average to quite good, but there aren't enough of them), so at this point I think success depends mainly on the game finding its audience and getting good word-of-mouth support.

So often the shmup form suffers at the hands of reviewers who don't know the nuances of the form. But then word of mouth can do great things, so the esteemed Mr K did a great thing pointing you here. Good luck with it!