Where are the shmups?

If a traditional shmup comes along and reignites the genre, I will regard it as a second coming. The genre is dead, buried and its soul rests peacefully in gaming heaven.

 

Magique, I hope you're right, but I was trying to reach the audience for several years and failed. How much money do you make from your games, if it's not a secret?

 

First of all, there is a difference between it being dead because no one is developing them and dead because no one wants them. You may be right on the former, but not on the latter. At least that's my personal opinion since I still want them and hence the reason I'm making them.

 

I haven't released them yet, but I have seen some interest on IndieDB.com as well as a nice level of interest from NintendoEnthusiast.com. I think the niche market of the Wii U combined with its lack of coverage in this area makes it a perfect fit. Especially since I have the potential of reaching over 2 million eShop users without any marketing effort on my part.

 

I don't say these things lightly, I love shmups.

 

That's really silly and wrong, given a playstation 4 launch title was a shootemup.

 

Agreed. I think his statement is more of a personal feeling. The genre could certainly be dead to him if he's played everything and feels burned out on them with no idea of what could be next. That, I understand. But to say it's dead in general is just wrong. Anyway, I aim to prove that kind of thinking wrong.

 

Hmm. If Ikaruga did it all then why is Ikaruga's creator making a new shmup for the PS4?

http://www.engadget.com/2014/08/15/ikaruga-creator-reveals-new-ps4-shooter-ubusana/

 

You can say that my opinion is "silly", in your opinion. However, I don't think you can really say I'm wrong with any oomph. The shooter I saw for PS4 was called "Resogun"...? Looks nice, but I don't see what is new there. It's got to be the most visually explosive shooter I've seen. I am not sure if I am searching wrong, but I can't find anything about Ubusana except some announcement videos.

I gather there won't be a boxed release, it'll be download only and that news is one year old.

 

The developers of Ubusana said it would be quite a while before the game was done. So, a year later is certainly not that long and I assume the game is still being made since I couldn't find any cancellation notices.

Why does it have to be the most visually explosive thing you've seen? Your desire for that specific thing is what makes the genre dead or alive?

 

Actually, the opposite. I am a fan of simple. I noticed that that game was not anything new, but it has very intense visuals. To me, that doesn't prove that the shmup genre still lives.

 

Well, this isn't exactly anything spectacularly new, but I did a shmup in less than 2 weeks on Unity for the Indie Game Maker Contest. If you want to play around with something.

http://contest.gamedevfort.com/submission/310#.VckNIvlVhBc

 

Who does box releases these days?

 

Expensive games that make lots of money. ;_;

 

Here's a nice shmup in development.

http://www.drifting-lands.com/

 

Off-topic point of order - nice new avatar!

 

I think you try too hard to advertise an expensive license without actually knowing if it works or not. Please release the game and then let us know how it goes. I'm approached and spammed daily by advertisers of so called indie consoles selling me same stories as you're trying here, but it doesn't work on me. I think Windows, since majority of people have it, is the most widespread gaming platform. Plus GPU of today's graphic cards sold with gaming PC configs can handle much more than any console of today and on higher resolutions.

I have a game I released back in 2014 called Invader Attack 2, first as an early unfinished game which I then finished over the course of several months. Disregard the trailer which was buggy performance-wise, skipping a lot of frames, stuttering all the time, etc., it was made back when v0.7 was latest and it's missing a lot of features. Even with 200+ downloads, the game didn't do well. I then decided to give it another shot and make Shmup God, which lacks any interest from gamers and only attracts designers, musicians and developers. So, I'm very close to agreeing with Anselmo. Only old and well established names among developers will still sell their shmups, the rest will struggle.

http://www.codergames.com/games/gamedetails/windows-game-3d-shooter-shmup-invader-attack-2/

Just an update on websites you referred me to, like gamefaq and gamejolt. Again, I only received comments from developers. So where are all the players? Did they vanish, did aliens abduct them? What is going on?

 

I agree, it is very nice. The main trailer only has 6,240 views. I just think it's not what people want. I still like Metallica. Avenged Sevenfold followed their style, but they're not Metallica because people don't want that anymore. Take away Nostalgia and what do you have? A rather simple formula game. A lot of today's players do not have that nostalgia.

 

I agree with Anselmo. 6,240 views means nothing at all. Since the game was advertised on Steam, those are probably just views of developers, designers and musicians, some players as well, who watched it out of curiosity. I added several of my clicks to the bunch and I'm not interested in the game. Good news is that there are about 60 likes, if those are not people who developed the game and their friends and family members. Bad news is that, even though, the game is currently free to download, it failed to attract any serious attention, even on Steam. Even Minecraft (which I didn't play), that was aggressively promoted for many years in movies and tv shows, had a conversion rate of 15% or so. They say it's a huge success, yet after so many brainwashing and hypnotism it generated such a low conversion, so this game will generate even less. How much is 10% of 6,240? It's 62,40. I don't think it will cover even the smallest fragment of time/cost of development. It will probably be the first and the last game they ever made.

 

Minecraft succeeded in making you feel like everybody was playing Minecraft. Which made you want to play Minecraft. To be fair, it is a charming little game. However, if you take all the craze surrounding it away and just look at what Minecraft is, without the love of the community of players and aspiring developers studying the reason for why it was so successful, it doesn't immediately strike you as something that should have sold as many units as it did. Better games have come along since and not reached the level of success Minecraft did.

So I start to wonder... if people rallied around a can of creamed corn if it could become the world's most popular can of creamed corn?

That said... again, for the reasons stated, shmups are currently not as popular as they used to be. If you trace them back, they existed during the arcade days. They are an arcade game at heart.

Anymore, I don't think people want short, punishing gameplay experiences. In fact, people seem to be demanding long, rewarding experiences.

In my opinion, people would be wise to take heed of that shift.

 

The thing is, this sort of thing happened before.

Once upon a time, game designers made horribly punishing games designed to liberate you from all those quarters you had. However, the arcade platformer genre was growing stale, and a new piece of gaming equipment - the then-cutting edge Nintendo Entertainment System - was just around the corner. Consoles were becoming a thing once again, and developers were streaming to the new hardware.

Now, arcade platformers were already getting tapped out. So, when a brand new game for the new system was being developed - an obscure title called "Super Mario Bros." - what happened? Well, the designer decided to make the game draw influences from both the stale arcade platformer genre, but also include more than a few elements from the shooter genre. Thus, Mario in his modern incarnation was born.

Since SHMUPs are a defunct area that some even in this thread liken to being "Dead" in the sense that Latin is a dead language (in other words, unable to express new ideas in any meaningful sense), it would logically follow that a possible path forward for SHMUPs is to make composite games using influences of other genres.

 

SHMUP is a combat style. Like turn-based combat. It isn't enough in and of itself to justify an entire game, at least not anymore. You are right, if a SHMUP wants to have a voice in today's scene, it needs to be seemlessly intertwined with something with a little soul. Yes, you're shooting... why are you shooting? What does the shooting mean? Gameplay elements have become like chords in music, even simple music has at least three chords. Indie games these days give me some hope.

 

I've seen that typically we classify games by their mechanics. SHMUPs are games that typically are observed from a 3rd person view, require shooting a projectile at something, and typically require positioning yourself to get your thing to hit the thing you want it to, while not getting hit with other projectiles.

That said, we can use other genres to solve SHMUP problems. You could get all recursive and have a SHMUP that uses platform mechanics...but, emphasizing the SHMUP aspects over the platformer mechanics (Pretty much a modern take on Contra, I guess. Alternatively, Mega Man/Mighty No. 9) You could go a different direction altogether and make a JRPG that requires quickly aiming at a target and firing during your turn, or making clutch evades if an enemy shoots at you (there is a game like this, I think it's a strategy RPG. The name escapes me. Point is, this isn't such a common composite setup.) Others could exist - what about an open world SHMUP? A MMO SHMUP?

There's untapped potential in the SHMUP market, but there's a great degree of creative sterility that has to be overcome. You could go one further than those traditional composites, and have a creative SHMUP by having an organism that shoots a specially chosen projectile at biomatter to alter it into another form, or have the player character be immobile in a traditional sense, but be able to move by shooting a spore, which becomes a new incarnation of the player character.

 

You could do anything. So I think that makes just making a technically sound game not enough, any longer.

 

I don't think that's called "creative sterility", it's called risk assessment. Companies making triple A titles stick with what currently brings a guaranteed amount of money and everyone else just tries to follow. I'm an independent game developer, so since this is my hobby, I can take risks and implement some unusual and weird features. You should all purchase my games, so go now and purchase Invader Attack 2.

 

Interesting discussion and opinions. I agree traditional shootemups are somewhat stale and since they were always quite a `hard-core` kind of genre, testing skills and reflexes (and appealing mainly to men?), I think it sort of got buried amongst the whole wave of casual games, 3d games, and mobile games. There are just so many other types of games now that it's kind of swamped out the shootemup genre. Also I think given most of them are that hard-core kind of high-skill mechanic it makes it seem sort of shallow or less appealing to those who have become used to something deeper and more social. All the prevalence of mobile/social/networked games now is really hugely different to how it used to be (it used to be a very rare feature). I have to agree for sure the audience size is at least proportionately much smaller now that so many other game types have exploded, but I do think there is still some audience for them.

I've also noticed an increasing (seeming) number of `next generation` shootemups coming out lately. `Humans must answer`, `Pythetron`, and some others, which are doing some new things at least visually. Although, in some ways I don't really prefer the 2.5D `lets do everything with 3D objects` kind of approach which has undesirable side-effects in terms of design and animation etc. when not really done well. Anyway... that has been a bit of a resurgence, at least in terms of people trying to push the graphics and interactivity (physics obstacles etc), which is sort of some new material, albeit limited by the technology.

One peeve I have though is that since shootemups tend to be quite skill-based, action-oriented, and people that copy existing games really lack creativity, there are just a tonne of BAD shootemups coming out as well, particularly on mobile. This is where they take what appears to be `the genre formula` and basically do exactly the same thing without going outside of the box. That means, boring enemies which fly in a sequence following a preset animation path and shooting hot little bullets in the direction of the player, then flying off-screen. I mean.... almost every one of them does that the same way, with no other significant AI, and it's just really boring. That's the part of it that I find to have been done to the death, and if that's all people are bringing to the table then that does make it seem like the genre is totally used-up. But that's only because people are not innovating enough. Shootemup developers, PLEASE don't just make yet another `I just discovered shootemups last week and I have no idea of their history so I'm going to make one following the exact same rules without questioning anything`.

Creativity is key. I do see some new-ish things happening in some of the modern shootemups, although mostly they tend to be people tacking-on `new techonologies` that weren't around back in the day, like making the environment out of physics objects etc, which I feel is usually a bad excuse for adding `gameplay`. And then obviously there are graphical upgrades with HD resolutions and lots of colors and so on. Those things are kind of natural advances bringing things up to speed with `the times`, to match what the hardware can do and thus what people tend to expect, but I still don't really feel like most of these games are breaking the mold. So this tends to be one genre that is sort of very locked-in to a certain formula and most game seem to stay very firmly inside that box.

I'm working on a new shootemup myself and I love this genre and play these kind of games still.... but trying to do something a bit different and less common, piling on the creativity rather than the technological upgrades. Hopefully it ends up as something fun to play that has enough of an audience to appreciate it.

 

Shmups used to be my favorite genre of all. I still like them a lot. They definitely are not mainstream these days. But then nothing is except FPS, RPGs and MMOs in general.

When I complete my exploration of different game dev frameworks I plan on returning to my shmup and finishing it. My emphasis on making one with "something more". Basically going back to a time long ago and following the direction they were on back when they used to explore different things besides just better audio visuals.

It seems like the problem with shmups is they have followed the same evolution as all of the other game types. More graphics, more FX, basically just try to do sensory overload.

Drifting Lands sounds like it tries to be different in that it is supposed to have RPG elements. Honestly, I never even heard of it before this thread and watching the video to me it looks very much like the same thing I have seen countless times since the 80s (although it looks better than most 80s games).

That is the big problem I think. When you strip away all of the advances in presentation from shmups (I think most games in general but here we are focusing on shmups) you find basically the same games I was playing 30 years ago and often not as good as the ones I played 15 to 25 years ago.

I get that most people can't see that. Still doesn't change the facts though. Shmups used to be cool. They used to innovate within the confines of the genre. Honestly, I think there was far more innovation many years ago than there is now. Environments. Enemy designs. Some kind of cool play mechanics. Some games even explored some greater interaction to a degree.

Now, it takes some imagination... but try to imagine these modern games with the presentation of the old games. Or try to imagine the old games with the presentation of these modern games. Then see if you can see any differences between the shmups made back then and the ones made today.

Gradius 2 on NES 1988

Blood Money on Amiga 1989

Viewpoint Neo Geo 1992

Pulstar Neo Geo 1995

I get they won't appeal to everyone.

Anyway, I think there are still many people who enjoy these games. The thing developers have to realize is that some of us have played some awesome games over the past 20 years. If you are giving us something that is no more innovative than what we played many times back then you might not get much interest from us now. Maybe. Maybe not. But... if you do what those games did back then... or at least what they tried to do within the limits of their technology... innovate a bit. Then your shmup will probably catch our attention.

 

Thats it you sold me, I'm going to build a multi-player RPG-like shoot-em-up.

(PS About to finish a large project so EVERY idea seems new exciting at the moment )

 

Hi

I found this thread some time ago, but never actually took the time to read it.

I´m currently working on an Unity shmup, it´s on very early stages, but you can see it here:

http://shmup-dev.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=445&sid=297f765fe8f5feaa1c73280cc057b64b



You can download a very bugged first prototype here, use WASD to move and Z to shoot, boxes at the beggining are upgrades...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kpxvaqp88u13a1f/Windows.rar?dl=0

 

Is this a shmup ?








So, yes there is unity shmup dev ^^!

We are a 2 men team and we are proud to introduce you to: « Bath of Blood »

We are passionate about 2D games such as « R-type » and « Last Resort » so we chose to create an horizontal shoot’ em up for our first game.


on a science-fiction environment, new items such as deep shots, dodge, and payback all in a very dark 2D high quality graphic style.

« Bath of Blood » is a game made by players for players and based on a lot of knowledge of video games and many conversations with people to whom we asked for feedback: “what can we bring and add to the game play in shoot’ em up’s ?“


Here are the links for more video information, print-screen …:

WebSite http://www.bathofblood.com

YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/BathOfBloodTheGame

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/BOB.ShootEmUp

Tweeter https://twitter.com/Bath_of_Blood


We hope you will enjoy what you see. all opinion from you is an help for us, please fell free to comment this prototype.

if you want to support us on Steam Concept:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=519660177

thx for your support.

 

Oh yeah, that sure is Definitely my type of dope

I don't know how far you are in the development (your "prototype" seems already advanced) but you really should get in touch with the guys from Sony because I think it's the right stuff for the PS Store (I love playing modern shmups on my Vita)

 

I know Taito like to re-release some of their older shooters on iOS. Most modern example I can think of is Darius Burst. So shmups can still work, you just need to get pretty fancy with them.

 

Wow, it's 11 years since Gradius V, the last shmup I really got excited about.

Like many genres, shmups struggled to move to 3D. Only a few managed to do 3D really well. In other cases the move could be detrimental to both graphics and gameplay.

There seems to be an obsession with portrait-mode shmups, too - which is quite offputting. While Ikaruga was amazing, that orientation is really bad for playing on a regular widescreen TV/monitor (although well suited to mobile! - Sky Force was rather enjoyable)

 

Make a couple & make your own tabletop console like in the arcades using a flat screen set into a coffee table with a sheet of toughened glass over the top. Wire in some joysticks & buttons........

Or buy one ready made & just make sure they have the facility to let you add your own games. Like
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Cocktail-Table-Arcade-Video-Game-Machine-/201120116953

 

You want shmup ? I give you shmup !

Working hard is not the issue, obtain something "unique" is the real challenge !



Strong graphics and unique gameplay !

You can destroy your enemies in plenty of depth layers in addition of the enemies in front of you.
You can customize your gamplay at each checkpoint (Shop).
Ducking depth allows you to be immortal for 2 seconds and become a genius in strategy of assassination by avoiding everything!
Upgrade your equipment into the Shop with the money generated by your kills.
Choose the Mega weapon and the Payback you want to play the way you want!
Yes there is a story, dialogues and humor. You see that ingame!
Story doesn't break action and gameplay.
Game modes : Normal & Money Survival, last mode opens everything.
32 Weapons - Scoring combo - Lots of Success adding more gameplay.
3 Paybacks > Dynamic retaliation when enemies are hitting you.
3 Mega Weapons > Powerfull strike.
Unlock successes to add more power on each Mega Weapon and Payback.
2 Opus games - First part of the game named : Worldbreakers.
Play each opus to unlock success, money, unique abilities and a special item ...

Would You Like To Know More ? : bathofblood.com

 

Will I necro this topic? Yes, of course I will necro this topic! RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE!

Why? Cuz I'm also very addicted to SHMUPS, and so I have a SHMUP here just for you! REDSHIFT Built upon the very solid foundations of classic shmups, but adding a modern look and feel



Welcome to the PRISM, a dazzling dimension of light and color existing somewhere between time and space. Your vessel, now known as the WHITE ANOMALY, have been pulled into the Prism from its universe of origin, and now you are TRAPPED INSIDE FOR ALL ETERNITY!

The only way to escape is to defeat other anomalies and absorb their color energy into yourself, navigating through 60+ levels of 100% PROCEDURALLY-GENERATED ENVIRONMENT, and acquiring new attacks and abilities from each color you level up. But beware! The Bastions are taking notice of all the energy you are accumulating, and won't let you leave the Prism without a fight...

Enough SHMUP for you? HERE'S THE TRAILER!

The game is still in development, Estimated release in 2017. but if you liked it, you can follow us in Social Media!
Like us on facebook! https://www.facebook.com/sgsredshift
Subscribe to the Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLn23EUiqHGM2ty6H_S6bxA
And we also have a Site / Devblog: http://www.starlightgamestudio.com.br/en/
And an IndieDB Page: http://www.indiedb.com/games/redshift1

Is this Enough SHMUP? I hope not, cuz we here still have a lot of wood to burn in this one

 

Sorry for necroing, but i accidentaly stumbled upon this topic. Pixelnest made Steredenn in Unity which has about 100k owners on Steam, plus it's on XBox, PS and iOS. They're preparing a new one new, Binary Stars. So, for good games, even if they're not from a wanted genre, there's always audience.

 

Interesting, and encouraging. This is a pretty good game with marketing done well.

 

Yea Stardenn was pretty cool!

 

https://www.hessburg.com/games/captaintemporium.html

 

It was abandoned a few months ago.

 

Speaking of shmups. I recently released an early access alpha version of my shmup called Frontier Guard.

https://magiqueprod.itch.io/frontier-guard

 

Looks good, love the lighting effects. Best of luck with the release!

 

Hi guys,

I'm making one too!

You can play the demo too: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1023790/Rick_Henderson/

 

This thread reminded med about Raptor: Call of the Shadows. Good times

 

Looks and sounds amazing, great job!

 

Thanks guys

 

I've been designing ExtraGalactica on and off for a few years now. Recently I teamed up with another guy to completely remake it from the ground up. Check it out! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1207840/ExtraGalactica/

 

this is awesome!