Ask a Game Dev

First off, I heavily suggest that you read [this post] about building tension in shoot em ups through enemy patterns. These are the fundamental game design concepts when building a shmup and you need to consider the sort of behavior patterns you will be aiming for when visually designing the bad guys.

Now… on to the visual design principles. There’s a lot that goes into the visual design of enemies in game but the most important element to consider is clarity. At a glance, the player needs to be able to tell what the enemy is probably going to do. This means you need to design visuals that suggest exactly what you want the enemy to do. For this, we’ll take a look at existing games in the genre, like Gradius itself.

Which of these enemies looks like it’s going to fire at you horizontally?

It’s probably enemy A, right? Why is that? Because it has a visible gun that’s pointed to the left and you’re (presumably) playing a side scroller where you move from left to right. Given the placement of the guns, you can immediately tell that these are probably turrets and which direction they are probably going to shoot.

Now consider this. Which of these enemies looks like it’s going to fire at you horizontally? 

You probably think enemy B here because it’s shaped like an arrow pointing to the left and it has this big chunk of negative space inside it that looks like it could totally be where a beam comes out. C also looks like it could be a contender for shooting horizontally thanks to hits heavy use of horizontal lines, though it lacks a visible gun or turret for bullets to come from. But we’re not done yet. Looking at these three enemies, which do you think would take more shots to kill? 

Intuitively, it feels like B would, again, be the correct answer. Why? Because it’s bigger than the others, and we subconsciously conflate size with strength and durability. Other visual elements can also convey this sense of durability - dull colors, visible armor plating, a bubble/glowing shield around it, etc.

We also need to take this sense of clarity further through their movement and animation. Which of the above three enemies would be best suited to spin and fire shots in a spiral pattern? Probably enemy A, since it already looks like it has circular pinwheel elements to it. But if it just stays in one place, static, it would not be as intuitive as if it spun in place while shooting. Even better, if you can give it a half second of spinning before it starts shooting bullets in a spiral, players would almost immediately understand what is about to happen.

This also applies to boss monsters. Imagine you saw a stage-end boss that looks like this. What looks like its vulnerable spot? How do you think you would attack this boss to deal damage to it?

The blue orb in the center seems like the obvious “weak point”, and shooting from the right to the left through the central area to hit it is probably the first intuition. It’s a specific color that contrasts with the rest of the boss’s body which specifically draws your eye to it. The heavy gunmetal grey outer parts are probably armored and I would not feel bad if shooting those armored sections did not result in damage to the boss. 

This can extend beyond just “generic” enemies. If you have enemy factions, they need to have a similar sort of visual design in order to tie them together. Maybe this faction is all metal enemies that have rivets and armor plates. Maybe that faction is organic fleshy details and eyeballs. Maybe it’s an ooze faction with globby bodies and bubbles. If you want them to be similar, show this through the visuals - color, detailing, etc. And don’t forget, you can also integrate the level art with the enemies like so:

What’s important to recognize here is that you’re establishing a visual language through the design of these enemies. This is an unspoken means of communication to the player - through the visual design you’re telling the player what each bad guy is going to do so that they are prepared. You’re telling the player which bad guys are stronger than others. You’re telling the player how to defeat the bad guys. You’re giving the player lore information about specific enemy factions by establishing common visual elements. It’s important that you are both clear with your design intentions and you are consistent with them. 

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It’s important for any budding game designer to realize just what it is we do and how it is we do it. Game design is ultimately about constructing an experience for the player. All of the numbers, visuals, randomization, timing, everything builds towards the experience that we want the player to feel. When designing anything, a designer wants to be cognizant of two main things:

Let’s get into these two questions. 

What experience do I want the player to feel? 

For shoot-em-ups like Armed Police Batrider, what this generally translates to is varying levels of tension. Tension in shmup games is directly proportional to how much precision the player needs to move their avatars to survive. The more wiggle room they have, the less tension there is. 

For example, this screenshot shows a situation of low tension:

This screenshot shows a situation of high tension:

As you may have guessed, the amount of stuff the player has to dodge on the screen is directly proportional to how tense the situation is. The more bullets/bad guys/etc. there are at once, the more tense the player gets.

This doesn’t mean you want the player to always feel super tense all the time. A good tension curve will draw the player in, give them an exciting experience, and then let them relax, feeling satisfied at the end. In abstract terms, it should look like a curve. More specifically, something like this:

It’s important to note that it isn’t super fun to be maximum tension on all the time. It will get exhausting for the player if there isn’t a lot of variation. You should build up tension over time, the action should climax for a brief moment and then, after it passes, there’s a “relaxation” period where the player can rest a bit before building up to the next climax (or level). But how do you actually do this in a shoot-em-up? Let’s take a look at the more practical side of things.

How do I get the player to feel this experience?

Shmup games especially are built on overlapping patterns. Enemies and objects appear at various timings and positions and release bullets for the player to shoot and dodge, respectively. These are the tools designers use to craft the experiences in these games. If you want lower tension, decrease the number of bad guys over time. If you want to raise tension, increase that number. You can build interesting patterns within these by creating different types of enemies - enemies that take longer to kill, large groups of easily-cleared enemies that release a single cloud of shots to dodge, etc. Then you use those enemies like a toolbox to create enemy groups that are designed to provide specific experiences to the player in terms of the tension they deliver.

The other important thing to note in this formula is the timing of things. A designer can increase tension by spawning more enemies over time, especially if the player probably hasn’t finished dealing with the last group. You can adjust these values by calculating the average amount of damage you expect the player to deal over time and dividing that among the health of the enemies you have on screen. This has roots in with the [Time to Kill metric] I’ve written about before.

In your situation, I suggest you start by creating the different classes of desired tension (rising, climax, relaxation, etc.), and then creating different squadrons of enemies that will release bullets in different and interesting patterns for each of those tension classes. Then, you can construct a new level by spawning the appropriate squadrons at scheduled times according to the sort of tension curve you want. Design bosses similarly - the boss should follow patterns based on the desired tension curve. There should be a brief period of lower tension at the start where the boss appears and begins to do its thing, with successively more complex patterns, culminating in some sort of high tension moment. 

This is how you learn design. Game design is all about figuring out how to craft the experience you want from the tools you have available. A lot of this is learning how the different things you do make the player feel. When you’re playing games, try identifying what feeling you’re getting when you play and what elements exactly the game is using to make you feel this way. Once you’ve identified them, you can try crafting them yourself.

[Join us on Discord]

The FANTa Project is currently on hiatus while I am crunching at work too busy.

[What is the FANTa project?] [Git the FANTa Project]

Got a burning question you want answered?