Check out my 2D shoot-em-up - DroneSwarm

Conor

YouTube Movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92PoS1NBwHE

Download the game here: http://droneswarm.com

Screenshots:





It's just a 1 level demo at the moment. I created it for a competition at shmup-dev.com.

notman

Looks cool... I'll give it a shot

Snowfly

Slick!

Hito

fun!

D4V1DC

Loven it, lookin good m8.

Japhir

looks great! only thing would be that the enemys die a little easy (or the gun shoots too fast)
great:D

Matroskin

nice job! But since models are in 3d (at least they look like 3d to me) it could be cool to see boss crafts falling down and expode somewhere below the actulal gameplay layer. This would add a "wow" factor and show off more depth. Like in some sidescrollers, for instance, bosses wre coming from background to foreground. At that times such an effect was just amazing.

Matroskin

Also I think that white clouds distract a bit form seeing player craft clear enough. I would suggest to make them more transparent. Or (and that is just me imagining the ideal solution : )) choose different background theme. A sunset clods would be perfect. It will offer different color, thus making player more visible, and it will also make image more beautiful; it will have it`s unique mood. Because now simply white clouds and blue ocean look too standard to me.

Keep up a great job!

Soccerman18

What language and what did you use to program it? While I doubt you're gonna hand out the code I'd be interested to see how it was made.

Snowfly

It's Torque Game Builder :-)

Emil Mujanovic

Just watched the vid, it looks pretty sweet. Will have to give the game a shot during my lunch break. I've always loved the top down scrolling shooters.
I guess my only crit is that it looks easy/predictable, especially the final boss. Once you've got the pattern, it becomes a piece of piss. I think if you introduced some other mini planes or heat seeking missiles or something during the boss battle, it will really help break up the noticeable pattern.
I especially liked the cloaking planes, they're really sweet!

-caseyjones

Conor

Thanks for the comments and crits everyone. I'll take it all on board as I refine the game and add more levels. It's great to see people like it enough to take the time to offer detailed suggestions!

moose

cool I'll echo comments about the clouds and terrain below, seems to conflict with the plane elements.

Could add to the excitment by having some fast "speed clouds" type stuff to give it some more energy. I only suggest it because it feels cool, but just doesnt feel "fast." The water and islands below could go for some love.

Maybe too, think about altering the cloud cover for sections, where sometimes you have poofy clouds, and the boss battle is higher above more clouds that almost completely obscure the ground.

Could break apart the "sections" of the level by having "omg speed up fast flyyy zoooommm" sections where you ascend a little, blurring the land below, increasing cloud cover, and maybe more fast moving air particles.

Reminds me of Ikaruga

tacit math

props for your efforts man. i'm a huge fan of vertical shooters myself. the only games i care to play. any particular reason you went with the top down side scrolling ?

Snowfly

More room to see the enemies coming, I'm guessing

Conor

It's designed at 1280 x 720 resolution, for high definition widescreen displays. There is support for portrait mode controls in the game, so if you want you can flip your monitor sideways and play it as a vertically scrolling shooter.

Moose: there are fast moving transparent clouds above the gamefield - they're probably hard to see in the mushy YouTube video. If it reminds you of Ikaruga then I'm definitely on the right track! Ikaruga's an awesome game, I'm looking forward to playing it on Xbox Live Arcade. I was also heavily influenced by Pixel's latest game, Guxt.
Click on the icon on the top left of this page to download Guxt