Weave

There is something fascinating about the genre of shmups, and particularly some of the ideas of free moving shmups where you’re also in control of your direction of travel. This mechanism alone could be perfected in a number of ways (ie bring the ease of maneuvering around enemy bullets and bodies to the genre, include things like bombing runs and create a sense of strategy, create drag physics, perhaps even a two player game between movement and shooting) But I think there is another direction that this could be taken, the planar nature of the genre creates a certain aesthetic sense of position and motion, that is likely unattainable in 3D, but what if the 3rd dimension was something like jumping above or below the board? in many ways it would function like flow, but where shifting of height was much more dynamic – a means of escape, of navigation, of reward collection, or of powerful attacks – it would also create a sort of puzzle feeling from the insides of buildings. The problem seems to be that it would need to work in free directional movement which would make it difficult to get the kind of flow going that this mechanism needs. Perhaps a sewing metaphor would be perfect here – and the idea of a tether could make the movement interesting. This needs more thought, but promising development of shooters.

PS – Ikaruga, SYNSO 2, and Warning forever break down the three primary components of shooters – aesthetic sense of place, aesthetic disorientation of place, and target focus.