Now, I'm an artistic sort of guy, and I appreciated Treasure's Ikaruga on a pure artistic level. I remember playing it once on a friend's Dreamcast, and it was awe inspiring. Simple control method, damn hard difficulty and pure eye candy to watch. As always, I thought - "Hey, this game is so good, I'm gonna make it myself!" And so I did. A couple years later with the advent of Game Maker 6, I had the sort of grunt necessary to pull of something that would vaguely resemble Ikaruga.

The concept is simple. You control a ship, which can be one of two polarities - light or dark. The enemies which you'll face an onslaught of will also be either light or dark. They will also fire corresponding bullets of the same polarity, i.e. dark enemies will fire dark bullets and vice versa. You can absorb bullets of the same polarity, i.e. if you are in light polarity mode, you can absorb light enemy bullets and vice versa. However, you can get destroyed by opposite polarity bullets, i.e. you get destroy by touching a dark bullet if you are in light polarity mode. With me so far? I didn't think so. You have to play it to understand. Enemies get destroyed by either polarity, and if you hit an enemy with an opposite polarity bullet, you'll deal double damage to it, i.e. hit a light enemy with a light bullet, you'll deal normal damage, but hit a light enemy with a dark bullet, you deal double the damage, and double the points.

Which brings me on to my next point, point scoring. Racking up a massive score in this game is the key point to playing. Sure, you can complete it, but what's the point when you have an abysmal score? This introduces strategy to the game. Because there is a simple (yes, simple) combo system involved. Hit three enemies of the same polarity, i.e. light, light, light, and you'll get a combo score. If you manage to get two combos in a row, i.e. light, light, light, dark, dark, dark, you'll get a two combo score, and so on. This means the bonus scores can pile up to a massive amount if you shoot carefully. This, and the polarity idea means for a simple game, with massive strategy.

Now to go on about something I didn't explain fully before - absorbing bullets. You can absorb bullets of the same colour. But what's the point? Well, first of all, you don't get destroyed by these bullets, therefore you won't be dodging masses of bullets all the time. With every bullet you absorb, it will accumulate in a power meter. The power meter is divided into 12 boxes, 10 bullets to fill each box. Once a box is full, you can unleash a homing polarity missile, which deals 10 times the damage to an enemy. Fill up all 12 boxes, and you have 12 missiles at your disposal [all fired at the same time].

Yes it may sound all so very complicated, but trust me, it isn't. Once you play it, you've understood it. I've concentrated on making this game look good. This means lots of glowing effects, and crazy visuals. And the same strategies employed in Ikaruga are also applicable here.

As for development, the polarity engine is up and running, and the eye candy is all set in place. I just need to draw about a zillion different enemies and bosses, and also get the backgrounds looking crazy. However one thing is stopping me from going any further with development - speed. Because of all the eye candy you see on the screen, it will make an underpowered PC cry for mercy, which isn't good. On my 2.4Ghz laptop, with 256MB RAM, it's just about keeping above 45fps on 32bit (60 is desired) with all the eye candy on the screen. This does not mean good gameplay. In fact it means crap gameplay. Whereas most people are happy with 30fps, I'm a perfectionist and want to get max frames. You can download the tech demo yourself and see how it runs. Things aren't bug free in it, and there are static enemies, but you should be able to get an idea of what it's about. I would appreciate any feedback on the performance of the game.