Zeboyd Indie Game Reviews

A Ten Step Guide to Creating Awesome Indie Shmups.

Step #1 – Make sure that the hitboxes for enemies don’t match their visuals. Players love it when they die merely from getting close to enemies.

Step #2 – Give the player 4 weapons, one for each button on the controller. Fill your game with enemies that can only be killed by using the appropriate colored weapon. Other than that, make each weapon exactly the same.

Step #3 – Give the enemies very straightforward AI like “Go straight” ensuring that the only way that a player could possibly lose is if they’re trying to shoot enemies instead of just getting out of their way.

Step #4 – Give all enemies machine guns that track the player. To counteract the difficulty in dodging, give the player a ton of health.

Step #5 – Give all enemies a ton of health. Players don’t like to mow down grunts with their superior firepower so ensure that every single enemy is a juggernaut. If an enemy is especially agile and hard to hit, give them even more health.

Step #6 – Give no indication of how much health boss enemies have or if the player is even successfully damaging them. Players like to be surprised like that.

Step #7 – Take away all power-ups whenever a player dies. Make the game ridiculously easy when fully powered-up and ridiculously hard right after dying. Players will enjoy the fluctating difficulty.

Step #8 – Use every button on the XBox 360 controller including both thumbsticks & all of the face buttons. The buttons are there for a reason, after all.

Step #9 – Players care more about length than variety. Take a level, change the background, and voila! Twice the levels!

Step #10 – Garish programmer art involving outer space is what sells shmups. If your title’s name is mostly illegible, that’s a plus.