Games with extra enemy wave / speed kill based scoring

[Nameschonvergeben]

Aside from the occasional midboss that reveals extra enemies if you speedkill it, and the spellcard timer that ostensibly rewards you for capturing spellcards quickly, I can't think of anything in Touhou that rewards you for killing things quickly. I can think of far more cases where you would want to keep enemies alive or time down boss attacks to get more graze.

Sure, the games have actual scoring besides that, but OP was explicitly asking for cases where extra enemies spawn if you kill the others quickly enough, which happens in some places. It's not just midbosses btw, in Imperishable Night stage 2 there are some places where new fairies only spawn if you killed the ones before them.

[Squire Grooktook]

Really good points. I agree that being rewarded with extra enemy spawns (preferably some very nasty ones) is the way to go, as opposed to a direct score bonus. Knowing waves well enough to dispose of them immediately has the great risk of actually making the game easier while rewarding the player for doing it, which compromises the classic risk/reward structure you want in a scoring system. If you want your score you gotta work for it. As exciting as Garegga is, I also prefer ranking systems where you WANT to play at max rank for maximum scoring potential.

I think RNG is definitely a big factor here. The reason I don't really want to get into Dangun is that scoring based almost entirely around memorizing the enemy waves just isn't my kinda thing. I already have a really hard time memorizing vertical shooters for survival purposes in the first place, and a game that rewards fast dispatching of enemies would definitely benefit from randomizing the enemy patterns a bit IMO. It's a difficult balance though - there's an obvious risk of limiting scoring potential in a run through random factors, or rewarding the player for simply taking bets on where enemies are about to appear, and that's really not good for a competitive genre. If you want randomness, you want enough of it to balance out things over the course of an entire game.

It's like top level play in NES Tetris vs. Tetris the Grand Master. In the former if you're going for a high-score, you want solid skills AND a lucky game where you get rewarded for taking risks you would never take in a one-on-one match. In TGM a player on a consistent skill level will potentially always get around the same grade due to the way the game tries to even out the random distribution of pieces.

Yah, even for survival rng is like that in general. It's a wild and crazy horse, and even if it can't give you unwinnable situations, it can still potentially make difficulty vary wildly. You absolutely can make it "consistent" though, for both survival and scoring purposes, but it requires some smart limitations and a very delicate touch. Realizing how difficult it can be, it's no surprise that many developers just go for static patterns instead. Much more manageable and requires less testing.

[Sumez]

Our poster boy for RNG in games, Daimakaimura, definitely has the "problem" that some patterns can be vastly more manageable than others, I think this is especially apparent with the jumping rock turtles and the insects coming at you when jumping on tongues.
I think it's evened out over a full game though, and the fact that you are required to 2-ALL the game for a valid 1CC definitely mitigates the problem to a level where I think it's a non-issue. If the game had been more competitive on a score level though, it could have been a major issue.

[Squire Grooktook]

Yeah if there was a "real" scoring system in Dai it'd need a bit of reworking. I think it'd be possible, in that kind of game though.

For example if you had a speedrun system, you could keep the random enemy spawns, working around the concept of "you can always keep moving forward if you react optimally", placing possible enemy spawn points based on what type of movement (running, jumping, dashing, whatever) you'd need in order to flawlessly continue a forward push. I had an old prototype sidescroller from a few years ago based around the concept, that I'd like to revisit sometime.

[guigui]

Of course Ikaruga has those extra pop-corn waves when you kill stuff fast enough, and time bonus on the bosses. Nothing like "main scoring technique" though.

[ciox]

I think this applies to Garegga and Batrider as well, but whenever there's large midboss style enemies in Battle Bakraid and popcorns are not spawning, the popcorns will resume or come in earlier than normal if the midboss is destroyed early enough, this is somewhat important not just for reasons of avoiding dead air, but because it provides a strategy in Bakraid where if you have the resources and presence of mind you can sacrifice the midboss early instead of using it to more easily keep your chain, in order to try and harvest as many of the popcorns that spawn in its aftermath as possible (their value can be as high as 2000x64) which seems like a no brainer but isn't since this little transgression can lead you to dropping the chain so it's something you'd naturally stay away from.

[davyK]

I have noticed extra enemies in some places in Gigawing.

For example if you dispose of the Stranger in one cycle in the lava level you get an extra wave of enemies immediately after it.