I created my own shmup that would be challenging, I was going to do space themed however I decided against since It had already been done a lot so I settled with a secret facility theme. I added additional mechanics to the shmup that would fit the theme and link back to the game so that they would not seem out of place or forced into the game. I also needed to add sound to my shmup that similarly would need to fit the theme and not seem out of place. The new mechanics I added were an energy system since ships need power to operate properly, Another mechanics I introduced was different weapons such as the tri-shot which fires a spread of 3 bullets at the front of the ship or the dual laser which fired 2 thin lasers from the ships front and lastly I had a weapon that fires a tall laser, Another mechanic I introduced were armor power ups that gave the player either slow health regeneration or buffed the energy regeneration to help them get through the level since it is quite challenging. For the mechanics for the enemies I added a boss at the end of the level with a large sum of health to give players one last challenge so when they finish the level it is satisfying and an enemy that teleport in a set pattern to make it harder to hit than the other enemies.
The strengths of my game were that my new mechanics helped make the game challenging as I had intended as the energy system I implemented stopped players from just button mashing in order to win and made each shot count since if you ran out of energy at a bad time it was pretty much game over, when I received my player feedback the difficulty was mentioned a few times so I did tone it down slightly to make it more bearable however I made sure it was still a challenging experience. Another strength of my game were the new mechanics as while some were not a in depth as I had hoped given the time limit I had and my experience in construct what I ended up making in the end was still pretty good since I got all my mechanics done and players seemed to like my implemented mechanics such as my energy system, armor upgrades, different weapons and teleporting enemies, I believe that this is because they fit my design intentions of a challenge and fit with my games theme quite well, which makes the gameplay all the more fun. Another strength was that I only had one bug last throughout most of the development which was that the players movement was sometimes hindered since it would only move diagonally however I fixed that problem so now there are no bugs in my game(that I know of) after all my testing which was something I had hoped to do, this is most likely due to the fact that all my bugs were just lines of code with wrong values and things like that. Another strength of my game was that I succeeded in creating a scrolling retro shoot-em up demo as I had all the needed main mechanics such as the auto scrolling, movement, weapons and enemies for my game to be a scrolling retro shoot-em up.
The weaknesses of my game were that while I wanted my games story to take a backseat in my game It ended up being non existence in the actual game, I intended to put some optional story elements into my game but just never got round to doing it as I just kept trying to improve what I had already finished and get rid of any bugs within my game, to improve this I would implement a simple cutscene at the start and end of the game to help explain the story .Another weakness was that my graphics were not as detailed as I had hoped they would have been, since my weapon power up and upgrade power up look the same and I should have made separate sprites since this may confuse players as they wont know what powerup they picked up and in general my sprites could have been better, to improve this I would spend more time on them so I can add detail to my sprites. Another weakness were my animations which while I got all the animations I wanted done they were quite basic and simple which makes sense as it was my first time animating but I still think I could have done a bit better animations especially for my boss as the blinking animation was not the best.
For my next project I will try to improve all my skills since I had already improved everything in comparison to my previous project. I have already started creating more advanced coding in construct and other aspects of construct such as making enemies that move around the playable area which I hope to further for the next project so I can get some even more detailed and fun mechanics than what I can currently create. I once again hope to improve my art since it is still not too good so I will continue to practice my art inside and outside of the project so that my next project will look better and less basic. Similarly to my last project I will also try to improve my sound design by trying to make my own sounds so that I can make sounds that are like what I imagined, allowing my sound design to be even better. While I have learnt how to use piskel to create simple animations for my game I hope that in the next project my animation skills will have improved along side my art so that I can add more advanced animations into my game especially since the it will require more animation than this project.
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