What is wrong with the shmup genre?

Indie Game

What is wrong with the shmup genre?

Amazoniangames

December 8, 2023

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ashpdewan

In my opinion:

1. It’s an old genre that hasn’t seen major innovation since like the early 00s

2. It thrives most in the arcade format, which is basically dead

3. It’s become very esoteric (think bullet hell games and their scoring systems)

4. At the same time, attempts to make shmups more modern or more accessible often ruin the core of what makes them good, and by going the traditional/retro route, you risk just making a worse version of a game that already exists. You’d have to innovate in a meaningful way, which isn’t easy.

I like shmups and I hope some game comes along that makes them more popular again, but currently I’m not seeing that happening

2. I don’t think the arcade format is a problem here. We have arcade-ish beat’em ups and fighting games nowadays and they are still quite popular.

4. Exactly! It looks like one of the main problems with shmups.

Also I think that another big problem is wasting a lot of time if players are not very skilled. Like, “Hey, you died! Restart the entire game from the very beginning!” or something. And unfortunately this problem cannot be fixed just by placing a bunch of checkpoints through the entire game.


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Schrompf

I haven’t found a revunitating idea for shmups, yet. I tried a few modern takes over the years, and I noticed:

a) I’m annoyed by roguelite attempts. Give me proper level design.
b) I’m annoyed by overly complex weapons or scoring systems or mechanics. I want to shoot things!
c) If the difficulty is high, I give up soon, and if it’s low enough to manage, I’m through in half an hour.

And I imagine c) being the main reason why they all design overly complex systems aimed at “replay value”.

There are good takes, though. Squad 51 vs. the Flying Saucers I enjoyed alot. Even though the One-Hit-Kills put me off. Maybe it all boils down to the fact that I’m 30 years older by now, with less spare time and many more obligations, and also a million games to choose from.

Hm… nowadays I’m mostly playing games to have a nice story and a conclusion and loads of Production Value. Maybe there’s potential in ubisofting the shmup genre with some semi-open worlds, POIs to tackle, some quests, maybe a crafting system to add cheap busywork.


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