Kistaro Windrider
60b685d94b
next step is to pick a real direction -- MMBN-like (+STS-like) or Survivors-like -- and adapt to match. I am likely to completely remove the energy system and use permanent autofire, freeing both fire buttons for more interesting tasks. It loses the opportunity to create a dynamic around baiting an enemy to keep shooting so its shields don't recover, but I don't think it loses a lot else. Either energy management needs to become really important and the game becomes strategic and tactical, or it needs to be a non-issue and it is an arcade game. Tyrian itself did not make the energy system interesting and it was just a tax, so making it interesting would be doing something new. But I think it's a kind of "interesting" that almost nobody would adopt unless I go _very hard_ into creating a tactical/strategic shmup. A shmup that is actually a strange kind of RTS sounds... really cool, actually, but I'm not at all confident I could design it. Removing energy entirely gives us a button _and_ a meter back, which can be used for XP (Survivors-like) or rearm time (MMBN-like).
mmbshmup
A Pico-8 shmup except it's a deckbuilder that is also Mega Man Battle Network.