#ShootABit app for iPhone and iPad
Developer: Christopher Scripca
First release : 15 Aug 2014
App size: 133.55 Mb
#ShootABit, 2.5D Retro Bullet Hell Shoot Em Up. Procedurally generated enemies, with locational damage and tons of upgrades.
Want locational damage to the ships? Ships disintegrate cube by cube, with their own power source and critical damage thresholds.
Want lots of destruction? Upgrade your guns, missiles, armor, and drones to take out tons of enemies.
Want compelling enemies? Each foe has procedurally generated intelligence, payload, and armor.
Want bosses that shower the screen in bullets? Each boss has procedurally generated behaviors on a tier based scale. Every vertical platform of the boss you defeat changes the gun patterns until you tear it asunder.
Game Mechanics:
Ships:
Each ship was hand drawn in 2d, then the engine takes the image and converts the pixels into cubes. Each cube has its own health so when damage is taken, the ship falls apart with locational damage. For each ship created the procedural generation engine uses a difficulty score to generate the movement, guns, and behavior patterns.
Power Core System:
Each ship has a set of cores that glow. Destroying these cores causes the ship to explode. Once a power core is absorbed into your score, it is also added to your cores. Cores are used for your ships upgrades.
Bosses:
Similar to the normal ships, the composition of the boss ships are procedurally generated. The difference is that the bosses are multiple 2d images layered on top of each other before being converted to cubes. The effect is a 3D boss in a 2.5D game. The bosses are then tiered based on how many cores are still available to the boss. Each time you destroy all cores on a level of the boss, the boss moves down and you fight the next tier. Each tier has its guns and behaviors generated with increasing difficulty.
Upgrades:
The players ship is composed of cubes and cores too. As you progress you are able to buy upgrades to your ship, guns, missiles, drones, damage, and armor. Guns can gain critical strikes, increased size of bullets, increased speed per shot. Missiles can be added to your payload, as well as a faster reload speed and increased damage ratio for each missile. Drones can be called into battle. They are small, slower moving copies of your own ship that can gain shooting speed upgrades, respawn speed upgrades, and armor/damage upgrades. Finally damage and armor, when upgraded will improve the survivability and killing ability of your ship.
Progression:
Each battle you fight over the course of the game, increases the difficulty. Every 10 enemy battles you face a boss. Each time a boss is defeated you are able to repair your ship and buy upgrades. All upgrades remain with you whether or not you die. Once dead you must start again at the base difficulty.
Leaderboards:
Leaderboards appear in #ShootABit as part of the gameplay. Each high score you beat from your friends leaderboard or the top 10 spawns a revenge ship that is worth extra points and cores.
Twitter Handle: @DeadlyApps
Website: www.DeadlyApps.com