After a nervous few hours reading all the wonderfully in-depth and fascinating posts on the forum, I've taken the plunge. Spadgy let me know about you guys months ago, and I think I've been aware of the site for a while (read: years), but never had the guts or reason to come and say hi.
Anyway, I'm Andrew and I run indie dev Spilt Milk Studios. We've got a new shmup coming out soon (beta before Christmas, we hope) and would love it if you guys could ask questions, y'know, needle me about the game in ways I won't have thought about, and hopefully if you guys'd like to then hop in to (maybe the alpha and definitely the beta) and play.
So we've taken it to a few shows (Eurogamer Expo and GameCity) and had some great feedback. Hookshot even covered it here:
http://www.hookshotinc.com/lazarus-the- ... ts-touchy/
The response has been great!
To summarise, I've always enjoyed shmups of all kinds (though never really excelled at playing any) and while some decent ones on iOS have whiled away a few hours, the inherent problem is always that devs insist on replicating two sticks on screen, or buttons.
We've come up with a really neat solution - one finger drags the player ship around, the other finger is used to direct the auto-fire in any direction - and people really seem to enjoy it. It even supports various different play styles.
Anyway, the game itself is an endless one, so as you progress the background changes (scrolling endlessly, from any direction...), new enemy patterns arrive, and you ascend through the game's 'stages', but without ever seeing a score screen until you die. You can upgrade your ship with collectible coins, and powerups take the form of AI's that attach to your ship. Each one is an animal character, that enhances your performance for a short span, and these can be powered up too.
We're looking at the idea of doing an 'endless' mode and a 'classic' mode. The classic mode would differ in that the enemy wave patterns would stay consistent for true high-score chasing, and the powerups etc. would all be of a standard, non-upgradeable power. Just to keep the playing field level really.
The score system is currently all about combos. You get +1 to your multiplier by killing an enemy before the combo timer empties. You can prevent your combo dropping by collecting items, but they don't add to the multiplier itself.
There is a separate multiplier that gets added on which is increased through skilled movement. The ship itself has some inertia (we feel this is essential to make the game feel tactile enough on the screen, and you can use this to 'pinball' off the screen edges and certain enemies. You also increase this bonus through scraping enemy shots.
Erm, not sure if I've missed anything.
So yeah...
*deep breath*
...what do you want to know?
^ Pug, your gunner
^Your ship
^The Pilot, or you.
Like I said, we're considering doing 2 modes, one classic (where it's all very much memorisable and learnable, and a fair base on which to compete against yourself - and others. The other mode would be the more randomised 'endless' which would be more of a test of reaction times and that kind of thing. I hope both can survive and be relevant i the same game, without really doing a) too much work and b) fighting each other in terms of audience.