I am working on an arcade-esque game where you pilot a spaceship around a horde of hazardous fish aliens intent on wiping out mankind.
The fish are obvious homages to the enemies of the Darius series, my favorite series of shmups.
Right now, I have five rather short levels, and I am roughly 95% done with the game, in its initial form (you see, I asked a girl to make intro and credits images, to give the game an authentic flair to it)...
So while I'm waiting for that, I'm pondering the addition of a few various things...
-a high-score table, as well as a scoring mechanic in general
-a timer, not so much for punishing players for running out of time, but to add to the scoring mechanic
-putting in a continue system to add to the challenge. Right now there are unlimited continues, but that can make the game boring through attrition. I wonder if adding a sense of tension by only giving the player 2 continues (or maybe even one!) would do my project good.
-an extra mode, unlocked after beating the game, featuring far more challenging levels... I am thinking about this mainly because, hey, all the enemies are programmed, so it's just a matter of putting them into the layout and making a level from that. Plus, don't we all love a challenge (though the one person besides me who has played the game has called it "balls hard" already, not getting past the second level)?
-longer levels (not too much longer... just long enough to have optional scoring opportunities)
Stuff like that. I mean, I don't intend on releasing the first version of the game until July 12 (an arbitrary date), so I have a good amount of time over the summer to fine-tune things...
Now I just need to figure out how to
A) put in a high-score table / .INI file
B) put in a timer that adds to the score
C) fix up the rough edges and loose ends of my game
But it feels good to be nearly completed with something, I'll tell you what.