About:Hello, I am a solo developer and I have been working on this game for about 1 year at this point.
Stellar Fury is a classic shoot 'em up that introduced some more modern sensibilities to the gameplay.
I know this isn't necessarily new or different, not trying necessarily to be new or different, just well done.
I started the journey of this game as your garden variety retro gamer although I've always had a soft spot for shoot 'em ups in particular.
The very first game I remember playing was a table top arcade cabinet of Galaga (or Galaxian - one of the two) in a pizza shop and growing up my first experiences of video games were in the arcade, shoot 'em ups were a mainstay and left a lasting impression.
As I got a little older my parents got me an NES and I remember taking my allowance money to a local hobby shop and my first video game purchase was SkyShark by Taito.
The more I've thrown myself into developing this game, I've dug deeper into what the genre has to offer and I hope I have the skill and ability to make a worthy entry into the genre.
The game is intended to be a game that maybe removes some of the more punishing aspects that are rooted in arcades without watering down the difficulty to much where it becomes an unrewarding experience.
Development Principles:Classic Gameplay/Modern Sensibilities: The core of development of this game is to focus on the fundamentals. At it's core it's a shoot 'em up game. If the core gameplay is bad, the game will be bad. No amount of other mechanics and "metagame" can solve for this. The goal is to make a classic shoot 'em up while removing some of what I call "arcade jank" - carryover game design engineered to munch quarters, the original microtransaction. At the same time, any changes can't compromised the game itself. New mechanics are being introduced carefully and thoughtfully.
Big Color Spritework: Back in the day, to show off your graphical processing, it was to produce spritework that was bigger and with more colors. It was the proverbial "raytracing" of the day. Today this style has largely fallen out of vogue - even amongst indie developers. Chief reason is cost. Margins are tight these days and it requires a level of efficiency if you want to pay your bills making games. These big colorful sprites are costly to make but they aren't going to move sales like they would maybe in the early to mid 90s. Given that I am doing this on my own time, I can afford to spend the time on these graphics as a love letter to the arcade games of the late 80s/early 90s.
Diverse Environments/Enemies: Each level I plan to make should be visually distinctive. This means spending extra time on artwork where reusing the same starfield background would be a lot quicker. Along the same vein of environments, large variety of enemy types is also important. Keeping the visual interest in the environment and the gameplay interest with new and changing enemies has been a cornerstone of development.




