Galaxy Guardians

Overview

The idea of “Shoot ‘Em Up” (SHMUP) games initially started with the classic arcade game Space Invaders. In Space Invaders, the game is played vertically with the player facing/shooting upward and enemies facing/shooting downward. Space Invaders’ gameplay is fairly simplistic in that the enemies move in horizontally in rows and down slowly in columns. This concept gave way to many other well-known titles that would expand the category. Popular games like the Japanese Touhou series, Ikaruga, and Type-R fall under SHMUPs, but are also referred to as “Bullet Hell” games for their chaotic enemy and shooting patterns.

For this project, our primary aim was to create a game that represented the other games that fall under the Bullet Hell category by implementing the same visual feeling and concepts. Some commonalities in these games is that movement and attack patterns of enemies are scripted, the game is played in a long vertical window, and there scrolling graphics in the background. As a representation of those games, our game would use these commonalities to be recognizable as a Bullet Hell, but maintain an image of uniqueness rather than an exact copy. The additional features—like the start screen and end sequence—were secondary achievements that were fairly simple to implement, and gave it the feeling of an actual game.

Comparing our solution to Touhou and Ikaruga, there are notable differences. One of the differences is the player controls such as moving and shooting. In Touhou and Ikaruga, the player controls by using mouse to move and holding down a key to constantly shoot. The player plays Galaxy Guardians by using the keyboard for both movement and shooting, and requires the player to repeatedly tap a key to shoot. Another difference is how chaotic Touhou and Ikaruga can be. The movement of the enemies and the patterns of their attacks can seem random and chaotic; however in our game, we were only able to emulate the simple attacks and movements.