UpShot

Today I've spent most of the day in front of the TV, playing with XNA Game Studio 2.0. I've come up with a relatively fun upwards scrolling shooter, a bit reminiscent of Xenon II - and others of that genre.

One of the major failings of XNA is that it's bloody hard to actually share your game out to someone else - so I'm not going to bother with that until it's complete, but here's a screenshot:



As you can see, it's still somewhat a work in progress - although that's mostly aesthetic. I've got little numbers rather than healthbars, and random images grabbed from the web instead of actual texture for my ships, bullets and other such things. The bullets are in fact just the logo from Tie-Dye Heart.

The worst enemy in the game is the German at the moment. The French are weak cowards who hide as far away from the player as possible. There's more, but you get the idea ;)

It's even got some retro-sounding soundtrack that I put together using some free clips from BBC OneMusic which is frankly a superb service - and one I'm very impressed.

There's only a few 'levels' for now though, and the powerups are a little too...powerful. If you can stay alive for more than five minutes your bullets will take up half the screen and obliterate any enemy nearby. Still though, fun to play and fun to make.