Game in a Week: Rarebit SHMUP

Every so often I take it upon myself to start a run where I make a game every week for a few months. Sometimes that turns into ten days, but I scope it out to about 15-20 hours worth of time, two hours a day.

Rarebit SHMUP is a cheese-themed shooter inspired by mid-80s forced scrolling shooters like Gradius and Xevious and a 1904 comic called Dream of the Rarebit Fiends which is all about people having weird dreams after eating too much cheese.

The game is about 5 minutes long if you beat it in one go and features five cheese-themed foes.

Production and Development

After updating to Godot 4.3 I decided to make a forced-scrolling horizontal shooter because I'd never done that before. I also wanted to make better use of components than I have in the past, with a more modular design pattern. Of course I over-scoped, and had to cut back on features as I went.

Days 1-2 was spent planning. I researched common patterns in vertical shmup enemy... patterns... along with level design and power-ups. I didn't come up with a theme or story yet, because with a project like this gameplay absolutely comes first, and I didn't know what I'd feel like drawing.

Days 3-5 were spent on the mechanics - getting the game to scroll smoothly, and implementing enemy types. I knew I wouldn't be able to implement the 20 potential foes I'd planned out, but various rabbit holes (and losing a day due to insufficient sleep) cut me down to five enemies. I also didn't get around to implementing power-ups, and while I did code in the ability for enemies to fire at the player, none of the five types implemented do so.

Days 6-7 were for art and music. I started out with the intent of making the foes common household items - something I appreciated in the Intellivision shooter Megamania - but kept making cheese so leaned into that. A dim memory of Dream of the Rarebit Fiends provided the story: you ate too much cheese and now are dreaming of cheese. This also let me implement a weird purple dreamscape parallax background.

Already at the end of my allotted week I considered cutting it here, but in the end gave it a few more days for polish.

Days 8-10 were spent letting friends playtest it while I made a tile-map and implemented terrain, then built the stage itself. The player sprite was the last added element.

Potential Improvements

If there's sufficient interest I could turn the game into a much larger project with:

• More enemy types
• Power-ups
• Lives and continues
• Multiple stages, with minibosses
• Commissioned music
• Secrets, like hidden power-ups and CLOWN MODE
• cutscenes

As always if you appreciate what I do and want to support more short games done fast, you can support me on patreon or comradery (which is like patreon but a co-op that doesn't take VC funding)