NEOGEAR - Cyberpunk Vertical Bullet Hell

[brettc]

I'm working on a cyberpunk vertical bullet hell shmup called NEOGEAR. It's inspired by Cho Ren Sha 68K, DDP, and the works of Tsutomu Nihei.

CURRENT STATUS: Caravan prototype released; full development beginning soon!

I'll post updates in this thread and keep this original post updated with the latest links and status of development!

On June 10, 2026 I released NEOGEAR -Summer Caravan '26-, a 2-minute time-attack mode for web, Linux, Windows, and macOS. It's a prototype for what I hope will become a full, multi-stage game.



Play the caravan mode: https://brettchalupa.itch.io/neogear-summer-caravan-26

The caravan release features scoring centered on collecting chips dropped by defeating enemies and cancelling bullets.

The key art and character designs are by Chromatic Arcana, and the game design, coding, and sound effects are by me. Music tracks from doranarasi, under their permissive license.

[brettc]

Here's a GIF of the gameplay from the caravan demo:



And here's a video of me playing through the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS74zIcQaaE

I learned a lot making the caravan mode. How to improve visibility, balancing and tuning spawning schedules, and working with sprites in shmups. While I have made smaller games before, this is the most complex (and in my opinion, fun). I know I've got a lot more to learn, like how to program dynamic bosses with multiple parts, varied bullet patterns, and scoring/rank.

I made the game using Usagi Engine, which is a free and open source game dev tool I made. You code games in Lua and your game live updates when your code and assets does. This made for a really rapid development experience for the caravan mode. But as I prepare to start working on the full game, I will likely switch to coding it in Rust so that I can have better performance. I also prefer statically-typed programming languages and a compiler. There comes a point with scripting languages like Lua where it gets to be untenable and a hassle to work in for me.

I made my own schedule editor for the caravan demo. It's very utilitarian. Basically at any frame I can place which enemies spawn in a given lane. It's a hassle to work with, so I think I will make something slightly more robust for the ~5 stages I am planning for the full game.

[Kyper]

Neat game, managed to break 600k:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdKeSDaVYVQ

Unfortunately I don't know much about anything to offer any real feedback, technical/game design or otherwise.

As you pondered on items you want to implement like varied bullet patterns and dynamic bosses, I think you're aware of things like how the enemy spawns are static compared to other caravan games where the next enemy in queue will spawn if you destroy them fast enough. Of course you don't have to match that exact behaviour in other games, but there's an odd bit of dead space at the end if you kill the boss and last enemies fast enough.

I only played the browser version and had no problems. The only real bug I ran into is that if you get a high score but don't make it to the end, it doesn't save. Not sure if intentional, but otherwise it's minor

[brettc]

Incredible score, Kyper, thanks for playing and sharing! Yes, the enemy spawns being static was something I intentionally chose and deviated from the caravan norm. Mostly for learning, as the full game will not be wave-based. I'll make a minor revision to the end so there's some more popcorn at the end, just so it's not dead space like you said.

The no high score if you die is intentional. I was thinking part of that score is surviving until the end. Maybe that's odd for a caravan, not sure actually! But thanks agian for the feedback.

[Ixmucane2]

Something I would like to do in this Caravan stage is grazing enemy bullets, for benefits that could include score, fractional lives or fractional bombs, and extending the chain.

The triangular coins tend to remain uncollected, maybe they could float towards the player (so that most of them are eventually collected) or at least stay on the screen instead of exiting and do something useful (e.g. multiply score or explode when hit)

[brettc]

Something I would like to do in this Caravan stage is grazing enemy bullets, for benefits that could include score, fractional lives or fractional bombs, and extending the chain.

The triangular coins tend to remain uncollected, maybe they could float towards the player (so that most of them are eventually collected) or at least stay on the screen instead of exiting and do something useful (e.g. multiply score or explode when hit)

Thanks for this feedback! I am unfamiliar with grazing, I haven't played any games with it yet. So I'll do some research. I'd like to put that in the full game. Noted!

The chips do float toward player a bit, but it does require you to move toward them as the pull gravity isn't very strong. I wanted to try to balance risk/reward with collecting chips vs handling the oncoming enemies. Love the idea of making them do a bit more.

I think what I will end up doing in the full version of the game is add a caravan stage in addition to the main stages where I can experiment a bit more and try these new ideas.

[Ixmucane2]

Currently chasing coins is so difficult, between their extreme dispersion, the short time before they are lost, and the need to stop and dodge bullets, that it doesn't seem worthwhile.
Since, on the other hand, the current precision dodging action is very good, I suggest reducing the demand for chasing coins rather than making it an easier action in ways that would ruin dodging (less obstacles, faster movement).

"Handling incoming enemies", i.e. shooting, could benefit from a quota of automatically aimed or guided weapons (more freedom of movement) and from tactically satisfying ways to take risks to increase firepower without powerups, like increased damage at close range or chain reactions of large enemy explosions taking out nearby enemies (rewarding the player for herding them into a crowd instead of shooting eagerly).

Another thing that coins could do is acting as obstacles that enemies avoid and cannot pass and/or explode in their face as proximity mines. This doesn't require particularly smart control and aiming, just dispersing in ways that tend towards a uniform distribution over the screen.