Top down shooter - your opinions please

allaboutiweb

At the moment I am working on a top down shooter, nothing in concrete just designing all the elements, attributes and rules before making the game itself. The main actor that does all the shooting is a slightly cartoon version of a modern day aircraft that has no gun, just missiles. To add a sense of realism I would like to limit the amount of missiles a user has to destroy the enemies who are all on the ground.

The game as I see it will require an element of skill because of this limit because:

a. If a user fires too early the limit life of the missile means that it will fizzle out before it reaches it's intended target and therefore it is wasted;

b. If the user targets incorrectly (the missile fires to where the user touches the screen) the scrolling ground means that the missile will miss it's intended target.

I bought a few top down shooters from the app store before I started the design and every one of them just has the aircraft constantly firing and the screen gradually filling up with enemy.

My question therefore is, is that a better form of top down shooter. Would users prefer to just blast away rather than take the time to target correctly. Obviously in my game if you don't destroy the required amount of targets with the missiles you have then you fail and have to start the level again, but if you are constantly firing a machine gun destruction is far easier.

Levels on my game will get harder as the user progresses with ground to air missiles as well as small arms fire to avoid in addition to the levels getting faster too so more judgement when aiming will be required.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts.

Tim

gazjm

I started work on something similar a month or so ago, and came to the decision that I would have the plane shooting bullets constantly but require 3 hits to kill an enemie, but also allow the user to collect missiles which are limited but do it in one hit.

tenrdrmer

I'd say build your game with the limits requiring skill then have unlocks that when you reach a point you have destruction mode for what you have already completed which allows non stop machine guns and limited missiles and then game completion allows non stop missiles which would be quite entertaining especially if you get the graphics right.