Project: Metarract: Aero

As the title of this post plainly shows, so "begins" our first project, a game that goes by the name Metarract: Aero.

Aero is a shoot 'em up, or put more simply a space shooter, like Galaga and Galaxian, and somewhat more recent titles like R-Type and Gradius. I recall many years ago when the Gamecube was still in its infancy when I made my way through the mall to find a demo of a game sitting in f.y.e. (though if it was f.y.e. at the time, I cannot recall. f.y.e. or a store that was similar). Now, I did not have a Gamecube at the time, but I found the console to be interesting, and Nintendo was quite the contender when it came to video games. So I played this demo, and I fell in love with it. Although I only played it for about five, perhaps ten minutes, I was enthralled with this game, and yet I would not find it again for years to come.

The game I'm referring to was Ikaruga, a fantastic bullet hell style game which employs an incredibly interesting polarity system. The game, though hard, is beautiful in its execution, and flows so cleanly that I made a point that I were to get it one day (which I did). I highly recommend it.

Now the point of that story was to explain where I derived my influence from. And although I will not achieve such brilliance in design, limited as I am in my abilities and tools, I hope that my game will at the very least flow at least half as well, and be one fourth as interesting.

Metarract: Aero is essentially another power-up shooter (vertically scrolling), but with a certain flair to the power-ups. They aren't stacking, nor do they replace each other. Put simply, you will bank each power-up, where you will either get so many shots or so many seconds to use the power-up. I thought this would help increase flow in the sense that rather than being forced to use the power-up you currently have, you can use whatever one fits the situation best, also keeping in mind your limited resources. I didn't particularly like making it with limited resources, but I felt it was necessary to keep your ship from becoming too powerful, and to keep people from using the same power-up over and over again (trust me, with some of them, you definitely would).

It is at this point that I've essentially created the basic engine for the game, and I have begun the finer points of the design stages, namely creating enemies, minibosses and bosses, and then arranging them all just so to create a level that's fluid. After each level I'll send the file to Cameron and he'll work his musical magic out to fit it in nicely with the gameplay. I'm quite excited for this game, and in time, hopefully you will be too.