Debian shoot 'em up games review
[Please Cc: to me because I am not subscribed to the list.]
I am interested in shoot 'em up games. This is a comment
for some of them that are available in Debian. Note
that .deb may be unavailable on a potato system
-- I use unstable.
By "shoot 'em up" I mean a game in which you pilot a plane
or a spaceship to shoot enemies. Games in which you can
shoot as an extra feature are not covered here.
I have a motto for shoot 'em up games: "why a shot button?"
If the game is just a kill-everything, why do I have to
push a key to shoot? There should be a reason -- this is
not a strict simulation of a airplane.
* Asteroids clones
In these games you shoot rocks (asteroids) and a few UFOs.
Since rocks don't shoot you (UFOs do, by the way), you are
safe -- if you can move your ship properly. Your ship can
turn left or right, or accelerate, but it has no brake.
Once you start moving, you have to turn back and accelerate
to slow down.
Another problem is that there can be only a finite number
of player's shots in a game window. If you miss several
times, you need to wait till one of your shots vanishes
to shoot again. Aiming accurately is more important
than shooting hard.
** xasteroids - X-based asteroids-style arcade game
This one has the simplest graphic. Your ship has a
shield and it can teleport. Time affects your score
-- your score decreases as time passes.
** xoids - Asteroids game with powerups and color graphics.
This is the most "realistic" one. The graphic is
not line-only diagrams. Shooting pushes you back a little.
Crashing into a rock does not break your ship if you are
moving slow enough. Both your ship and an UFO can power up
by getting an item. Your ship can teleport but has no shield.
** vectoroids - vector-based rock-shooting
This one comes with a sound. The key control is the simplest
-- no shield, no teleportation, and your ship will slow down
automatically. Only two shots are allowed at a time, so aiming
is very important. There seems to be no UFOs.
* kill all of them
This is a rather old type of a shoot-em-up. In each
stage, a specific number of enemies will appear. If
you kill all of them before you are killed, you can
go to next stage.
** criticalmass - Shoot-em-up a la galaxian
It has a nice graphic if you have a 3D accelerator.
It also has a nice music. It will be a very exciting
game if the player ship can move up or down
(See #136642). Enemies shoot horizontally.
Shooting too much in a short time will overheat your ship,
so aim before shoot.
** nighthawk - An improved version of Paradroid - a strategic shoot-em up.
This is a bit off-topic because you are a droid _in_
a spaceship. The goal of the game is to destroy
other droids by shooting them or cracking into and
taking over them (which may be far easier than shooting it).
A mouse is required.
** powermanga - A vertical shoot 'em up for X11 with colourful 3D graphics.
If you are tired of near-future look and feel, try
this one. It has an individual graphic and sound.
Though it has scrolling stage intervals and end-of-stage
bosses, this is basically a kill-everything.
Here is a tip: you have to choose how to power up your
ship carefully to survive, that is, to kill the first boss.
Upgrade your ship two times, then get a homing missile.
[Why a shot button?]
** xkobo - a game of space battle
This is a search-and-destroy. The window is small (at least
you have a 1024x768 display). Your ship is better than
the one in Asteroids clones -- all you have to do to move is
to enter which direction you want to go with cursor keys.
Unfortunately, each cursor key indicates some direction,
so you can't stop. Escaping from enemy shots is difficult.
[Why a shot button?]
** zblast-x11 - X11 version of zblast, shoot 'em up space game
This is very difficult -- I can't see enemy's shots. The upstream
author says in the manpage: "At the time of writing, I've
only managed to get all the way through twice."
svgalib version is also available (zblast-svgalib).
[Why a shot button -- it does not even auto-repeat!]
* scrolling window
Modern arcade shoot 'em up games are usually this type.
You need to survive while the window scrolls (just to
survive is enough -- you don't have to kill everything),
and destroy an end-of-stage boss.
** chromium - Slick scrolling space shooter
I'm sorry to show an exception first -- in this game,
you _must_ kill all enemies. Each enemy that gets by
costs you a life! To achieve this goal, you have to
act intelligently. Your normal shots are weak, you need
power-up items, but they give you only finite number of
bullets. Well, you have another, very powerful weapon
-- self-destruction. It will sweep away all enemies
in the window. The big red button is always with you.
The game has few kinds of enemies but is still interesting.
A mouse and a 3D accelerator are required.
** ketm - An old-school 2d-scrolling shooter
The startup message says: "FYI: very early prepreprealpha,
debug-mode forced". It works but it is not much fun.
Don't try to pass between enemy shots. Your ships are
as big as it looks.
Characters have a 20th century taste (some are planes,
some are UFOs). No sound is available.
[Why a shot button?]
** xbat - A classic shoot-em-up game for X11.
It is very similar to Xevious, Namco's famous shoot-em-up.
As in Xevious, you need to find and bomb secret objects
to get a good score.
[Why a shot button?]
** xsoldier - shoot-em up
This is a typical "scrolling window" shoot 'em up.
If you think escaping from enemy shots is exciting,
I recommend this one.
[Why a shot button?]
Here is my answer -- this is a way to give a shot button
a meaning. I hacked xsoldier so that releasing the shot
button will give you many points. Since I am not the
upstream (it seems dead, so I'm planning to take over it)
or the Debian maintainer of xsoldier, I uploaded
my unofficial fork here (sorry, source code only):
http://www.interq.or.jp/libra/oohara/xsoldier/xsoldier-0.97.tar.gz
Note that this is _very_ different from the latest official
release (0.96, released in 1997). See ChangeLog for details.
--
Oohara Yuuma <oohara@libra.interq.or.jp>
Debian developer
PGP key (key ID F464A695) http://www.interq.or.jp/libra/oohara/pub-key.txt
Key fingerprint = 6142 8D07 9C5B 159B C170 1F4A 40D6 F42E F464 A695
I always put away what I take.
--- Ryuji Akai, "Star away"
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