SHMµP is a little game I work on during my spare time. I felt like it reached the point where I can show it, so here we go.
It is by no means finished, but more like a demo at the current state; yet it is totally playable.
It was inspired by classic arcade shoot them up games, with a penchant for bullet hells. I am no artist, so I thought about this block thing to make up the graphics of my game; I liked the idea to link the visual aspect to the gameplay.
The block is the elementary unit in the game. The player ship, enemies, bullets, everything is composed of blocks.
Blocks are important for the gameplay, of course. They are what you will use to build your ship, making it unique. Each block has a particular effect on your ship, and so they do on enemies!
I am lazy, so this game includes 0 stages.
The good news is, no stage means infinite stage: the enemies are generated on the fly, by a clever algorithm (soon™).
As time passes, the difficulty increases. By beating enemies, getting bonus and avoiding getting hit, the player increases his skill-o-meter. Waves will then adapt the way they generate enemies based on these 2 parameters, among others.
The game relies heavily on random, but every run can be replayed: you just need to enter the same seed once again.
Enemies are scripts.
Waves are scripts.
Scripts make the game, and anybody can make scripts.
Your ship does not do many things, but it does them nicely. Well, at first it does nothing at all, you'll need to give it a little help to get it started.
The at the center of your ship is the reactor, the most important part. It has to be there, and it is the only hitbox of your ship: if enemies hit it your ship will be damaged, and loose external blocks. But the other blocks you added can be traversed by bullets and enemies with no problem.
When killed, enemies sometimes drop bonuses, that's the way to gain new blocks for your ship. Just go over to loot them.
Launch the game, and click PLAY
Enter your seed with the keyboard. This will determine how the random behaves.
Press Enter and add blocks to your ship by clicking them.
Play!