avoidance games
For a long time I thought a shmup was the easiest type of action game to make, but recently I've found an even easier one: avoidance games. Avoidance games are basically shmups without the shooting, which just leaves the dodging. I've made a couple of these so far, both of which only took a couple of hours to slap together: Evil Sports, which I finished last night, and An Angel Dances in the Sparks of a Bonfire, which I made the day after I released Flower Visit. I kind of want to make a third one now and call it a trilogy...
Anyway, I think you can lump avoidance games into three major categories: fixed, deterministic, and random. These categories are technically applicable to all games, but the nature of avoidance games really makes them lean into the implications of each, so they're a good case study.
- Fixed games are about learning a set pattern. The things you're dodging move exactly the same way every time, so the game is about memorizing a safe route. A lot of older horizontal shmups are like this.
- Deterministic games behave consistently, but their behavior is tied to the player's movement. If the player moves exactly the same way each time, the resulting patterns will be the same, but any small inconsistencies may create significant deviations as they accumulate over time. Evil Sports is a deterministic game, because the soccer balls will follow you.
- Random games have patterns that are different each time. In these games, you're learning the meta-patterns, and developing more generalized, abstracted comprehension skills. An Angel Dances in the Sparks of a Bonfire is a random game, because the sparks are generated with a random position, angle, and speed.
Since I've made a deterministic avoidance game and a random one, maybe the third in the trilogy should be a fixed game... it could be cool to randomly generate stuff to save time, but then just always use the same seed so it's identical every time. Maybe New Game+ unlocks random seeds, or maybe the seed is the current date... or maybe you get to work on Love Eternal already, ya lazy slob!! Ahaha later