Wings of Megaira
Platform: Download (Windows)
Wings of Megaira is an official entry of the 2005 Independent Games Festival in the student showcase, and I couldn't be happier to report that the game was designed and built by four (4) esteemed colleagues here at RIT.
The made-for-Windows game is a classically styled top-down shooter in which you control a fighter ship against fast-moving waves of alien enemies. Along with the standard single-player mode, Wings of Megaira offers two player cooperative play on the same computer using keyboard or joystick.
The game offers up a variety of weapons and special features to keep the action blazing across the screen, or suspended in time. Lasers will light things up with their awesome mind-blowing power, and time shift will slow all enemies to a snail's pace, thus giving you the upper hand in battle. You start off with just a machine gun, and before you can use more powerful weapons you must absorb the soul of the enemy—effectively stealing their weapon. Red enemies carry machine guns, blue enemies carry lasers, and green carry grenades. Other power-ups are also available along the way.
The game is amazing and gorgeous, and I really believe these guys are going to walk away with an award of some kind for it. Michael Clark has outdone himself by designing all the models and in-game art, and it shows just how talented he is with ‘Wings'. Andy Lorino, Eli Tayrien, and Alex Cutting all mastered the art of Direct3D game programming while building other 2D and 3D games for RIT's Andy Phelps. They then got together over the summer and decided to build one for the IGF. Wings of Megaira is what they came up with, and it rocks! Click.
I played it. My first impression is that it isnt really polished. I think it mainly has to do with the art style and bad typography. That's fine though because the student games are usually like that.
As for the gameplay though - its just ok. The movement of the enemies as very "straight" as the game starts out. I was really hoping for some beautiful enemy ship dancing.
Defeating the first boss is just annoying.
I know - bitchy weblog comment post. I personally hate them when they arent constructive. The reason why Im writing this is that with just a little more focus to fundamental gameplay design and less focus on 3d models and visuals, this game could be really great. I like the time slow feature that is nice. The idea of sucking the powers of a enemy is nice, but half-baked in this game. I think it would have been better to shoot the enemy until a state of it being "dead" yet still floating on the screen. At that point you could deploy harvesters that would bring the enemy weapon back to you. You of course would have to be careful not to shoot the harvesters, otherwise you wouldnt get your weapon.
I think that wanting to look like a "real" (commercial) game sometimes takes away from the original point. I think they need to study: Tumiki Fighters. http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/windows/tf_e.html
Its a beautiful shooter. It is amazing well designed. The visual aesthetic is very simple and consistent. Simple visuals, simply a great game.
But for an independant project - great work. Im sure with more time there were tons of things they wanted to add/tweak anyways.
Side note - IGF needs to change thier website! There are no thumbnails of screenshots for the games!!@#! I cant go through and download each one!
Charles, you bring up some very good constructive points about the game, and I have forwarded your comments along to the team. I know that the development cycle for it was very short, and it's pretty remarkable what they were able to accomplish in the time frame.
Thanks very much for your input. I know they appreciate hearing what people think of it, and I believe they intend to keep working on it to make it the even better.
This game is annoying i can't play it on either of my two computers. I downloaded that Direct X thing but still it won't work
How come there's no sound in this game??
looks like a great game, but at the moment, it's Saturday night and I'm feeling too darn lazy to download anything. =)
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