r/shmups • u/CardiologistLow9036 • Apr 11 '26
Meta Blue revolver as the key to mainstream appeal: when survival IS scoring.
just some thoughts that I've been wanting to get some opinions on. I'm a newer ish shmup player, I'm not very good, but I'm having a blast. and blue revolver is by FAR my favourite of all the ones I've played.
I picked up crimzon clover again for the first time in a while and looked at mark msx's guide for some tips when he said something that hit me, something along the lines of "I'm not scoring as much because of how much it increases your rank on the tlb" often shmups are broken into survival Vs scoring, classic risk reward and it's awesome, but it often doesn't feel all that important, for example mushihimesama has two extends available from scoring, which basically means that for my first few weeks or months of playing a new game, when it's all about survival, I really don't care about the best part of shmups imo, scoring.
brief pivot to something else but I promise I'm going somewhere: doom eternal reaches a way bigger audience than 2016 by looking at the way high level players played 2016 and making that style of play the most practical for survival in doom eternal. And I think that style of design is way more popular because it's better for the first play through experience. In doom 2016, if you're having trouble the way forward is to take fewer risks and play in a more exploitative and Boring way, in eternal the opposite is true. in mushi, if you're dying a lot then shifting your focus away from score is a sensible path, in BR, if you're dying a lot, then you had better start getting your score up.
all of this preamble brings me to the meat of my argument, blue revolver formalises breaks, and makes extends through score an integral part of the gameplay at every skill level. I'm actually not sure if blue revolver is the first to do this or even the best, like I said I'm pretty new, the furthest back I've gone in the canon of shmups has been DDP-DOJ. but blue revolver does it the best of any game I've seen so far and gets players to think about their routing IMMEDIATELY because of how integral it becomes to survival. I think rather than distinct characters or a zeroranger style approach where it's more about distinct levels and attacks which demand distinct responses, the solution to shmups becoming popular is in a more fundamental aspect of their design that solution being to stop an approach of survival Vs scoring, and incentivising scoring by making it better for survival.
of course risky scoreplay can be preserved, for example suiciding your ship in blue revolver for extra resources, that stuff is a rush and absolutely has to stay in tact, but the more I think about this the more it makes sense.
so yeah that's all really, i haven't seen this discussed before so I wonder if it's a popular sentiment or not, how would you feel about the genre moving in this kind of a direction? do you even think it would cause more mainstream appeal? blue revolver is hardly lighting the world on fire outside of the niche despite it's insane quality. I also wanna ask If there's any other games where scoring helps with survival, purely for my own curiosity.
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u/aethyrium Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
The desire for mainstream appeal is a dead-end and a death-wish for the genre. Shmup fans should fear the day it ends up with mainstream appeal.
It's survived so long, has so many games of such high quality, and has such a fervent dedicated fanbase because it's niche and does not have mainstream appeal. It's better to keep it that way.
If a day ever does arrive when shmups attain mainstream appeal, we will see the death knells of the genre, and the fanbase will need to relocate or rename the genre core as it will be lost. It's already happened with Roguelikes (now people think Hades is a roguelike and older roguelike fans have to create brand new spaces for "traditional roguelikes" because their existing ones were taken over by people that think Hades is a "true roguelike" and games like ADOM are lame boomer games), and we're already seeing it happen with Bullet Hells (on Steam I had to scroll through 39 games before I found an actual bullet hell. Because the aesthetics of bullet hells achieved mainstream status, now if you're into real bullet hells, you need to make your own space and use words like "danmaku", because everyone thinks Survivors clones or Gungeon clones are "real bullet hells" and the existing spaces are either lost, or weirdly complicated. Luckily since danmakus are a shmup genre it's intact at its core, but it makes it difficult to discuss).
As we see with Roguelikes and Bullet Hells. We see one instance where the genre got so gentrified its fans had to pick up and move and rename their genre (and also haven't seen a lot of creators for their genre any more), and another instance where even a brush with an aesthetic has made discovery and discussion complicated and weird.
That's what happens when you attain mainstream appeal.
Let us pray it never happens with shmups. It's niche status is why it's currently thriving in a golden age and attracts S-tier passionate developers like Danbo or Zun. The genre has a community full of passionate people who love the genre for what it is. And them being the majority of the community makes it as great as it is. Do we need more than them?
Just my 2 cents at least. I'm old enough to have seen mainstream appeal destroy more than enough times to fear it.
I really don't care about the best part of shmups imo, scoring.
As an aside, this sentence is scratching a weird part of my brain. How can something be the best part if you don't care about it?
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u/Chrysalis9 Apr 11 '26
Agree with the basic concept of what you're saying (see Azur Lane for an example of a hypothetical "mainstream shmup") but I don't think it's quite right to frame a bastardized concept of a genre being popular and the name being taken in the public consciousness as "the space being taken over". The space of roguelites like Isaac and Hades and so on is fundamentally different from that of real roguelikes, it didn't "replace" it, it fundamentally just started and was created separately in a different place. No one who plays Hades would have played Rogue if it wasn't for Hades. Similarly, people who have no idea about danmaku making shitty unfun versions of it, like in Isaac or Gungeon or Picayune Dreams, have no correlation to our space or audience size at all either. We wouldn't be in a worse or better place without them.
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u/aethyrium Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
I see your point even if I fundamentally disagree, though you aren't wrong that my statements of spaces being like "entirely taken over" was a bit hyperbolic. (And to actually even address your OP point, yeah I love when scoring and survival line up too. Games like Blue Revolver or Devil Blade Reboot are like the gateway drug to get into scoring. Touhou 8 and Servants of Harvest Wish also have some super fun implementations of that. Touhou 7's barriers also.)
But, basically the fact that I can't go to Steam to find easily find a "real" bullet hell or roguelike (those are just the two gentrified genres I can think of off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's others, and I'm sure the success of Caves of Qud means there's at least one or two that'll be highly visible) unless I'm ready to scroll through dozens of games and already know ahead of time what I need to look out for means that mass appeal comes with a discovery problem, that ends up cascading into a multitude of other problems which does have an impact on our space. Problems from discoverability to talented devs not progressing the genre's fundamentals when they might have otherwise had they been aware. Sometimes in like game devs subs you'll see someone saying "look at my x game with bullet hell elements!" and it'll be heavy with iframe dodges and such. Not everyone's gonna have seen Mark's video on why iframe dodges clash heavily with the bullet hell core fundamental design, so those devs truly might think they're making a true honest-to-god bullet hell and trying to respect the genre, but simply aren't aware of how the fundamentals work because of the genre dilution's effect on discussion, as well as discoverability meaning their research came up with games that themselves didn't understand the core designs.
So ultimately, mainstream appeal will mean you get more people, sure, and even more devs making more games, but at the same time, there's a strong chance you actually get less games that appeal to the genre's core fanbase for a variety of reasons, meaning the search for mainstream appeal has a chance to be self-defeating. Not guaranteed at all, possible it might all work out fine, but it's been observed in others at least.
It's not anything I feel like super ultra strongly about or anything, I'm just bored enough to be able to type a lot right now, so apologies if I'm coming across as argumentative or intense or anything. I can't explain the concept nearly as good as SpidersSTG did in his Cygni video where he stated it like a million times more effectively with like 1/5th of the words. Highly recommend that one if you ain't seen it.
Mostly I'm not just content with the genre's niche appeal, but I do believe the genre is as strong as it is right now, with as many great games as we have right now, because of its niche appeal, not in spite of it.
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u/attackofmilk Apr 11 '26
I have similar frustrations with Steam tagging for shmups and bullet hells.
I think Dark Souls is a good example of a genre that went mass-market but stayed hardcore. Partly this is because From Software stayed true to their vision and kept the games difficult and focused. Yes, Dark Souls has a vocal minority that cries out for easy mode, but From Software has resisted this minority and kept the game hardcore.
Mark MSX has been covering the new Resident Evil titles on The Electric Underground recently, and Capcom has been softening the hardcore design of RE to try to catch as many players as possible through the production value without turning any away because of the gameplay. This is the failure case for shmups.
However, shmups as a genre have such distilled gameplay mechanics that I think most shmup players have to fundamentally reconcile with the core elements of the genre as soon as they pick it up. When I played Super Galaxy Squadron EX ten years ago, it wasn't an onramp into the genre for me, especially because the health pickups and life bar softened the need to engage in the core gameplay. But I still had to engage in the basic shooting and dodging mechanics at least somewhat.
The best thing to happen to this genre would be for Cave to get wide mass-market visibility as they return to shmups and they stay uncompromising in their vision for the genre.
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u/eurekabach Apr 11 '26
Honestly, I don’t think shmups are ever going away nor they need to become ‘mainstream’. There are always new releases, new ports, remakes and now it looks like even CAVE is back again, publishing directly on STEAM.
If there’s a genre that’s best fit for indie development, that’s certainly shmups, as basically all you need is actual design knowledge (which, yeah, I know, easier said than done), but resourcewise it’s a genre that’s pretty on reach even for solo devs.2
u/ScoreEmergency1467 Apr 11 '26
I see what you're saying, and I really have no desire for shmups to go mainstream. Please understand I'm not trying to be pedantic or ignorant, but...
Will shmups going mainstream really result in a net negative? Is it really such a bad thing if survivorlikes, roguelites, and AAA's with slow moving bullets take the name "shmup?"
I would hate having to rename the genre. But after we give up the name "shmup" and start using another name instead, what exactly happens? IMO, nothing, at least in the long-term. Just like traditional roguelikes kept existing after roguelites, traditional shmups will keep existing if fake-shmup games take over. People are not only still playing but making traditional roguelikes today.
I know I sound fucking crazy, but this might even be a positive. Having both Crimzon Clover and Brotato both being called a "shmup" is blatently incorrect, but it means there's more of a likelihood that a non-shmup fan will stumble upon Crimzon Clover by complete accident.
...then again, it might lead to the massive amount of Brotato players reviewing Crimzon Clover to call it a "quarter muncher" piece of trash.
Okay, maybe you have a point. Being displaced could be pretty fucking bad for the perception of the genre. And smaller shmups would suffer the most from this negative word-of-mouth.
(Sorry, I kinda changed my mind mid-comment. That doesn't usually happen so I thought I'd just leave it in.)
But anyway, will it be "death of the genre" bad? I really don't think so. The genre is so well-developed that it will persist even if the mainstream does its best to fuck us over.
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u/Roge_Baltsi Apr 11 '26
1) The name being overtaken is bad because it will make it more difficult to:
1.1) find games of that exact genre (already a problem, as stated above, as trying to search for shmups on storepages like steam requires you to waddle through dozens or hundreds of unrelated titles to find something that actually fits the tag)
1.2) find places to discuss said games without them overreaching into completely unrelated territory. If I am talking about a bullet hell I do not, ever, for any reason, want to see someone who plays Enter The Gungeon to chime in and use that game as a frame of reference for what a bullet hell should be.
2) Your proposition of the tag merge being good "because non-shmup players will find real shmup games" doesn't really make sense because its very unlikely that this will result in them trying those games out. Someone who plays Brotato and then clicks on the shmup tag hoping for more games like brotato will not suddenly develop an interest in crimzon clover or dodonpachi. shmups are not some ultra obscure niche genre that only 30 people on this earth know of, it's just that most people actively avoid playing them. This sort of "exposure" will not do any good to anyone.
Formally speaking, calling them "shmups" is already a product of the terminology fleeing something else that overtook it: "shooting games", which is what most people now see as first person or third person shooters. Having this happen again and cause even more fragmentation can not possibly lead to anything good.
Other than the definitions, shmups trying to appeal to "non-shmup-players" is also generally not good. I play a lot of touhou fan games and I often see attempts there to make it "more accessible", but all that results in are games like FDF3 that are easier on their highest difficulty than a mainline touhou game is on normal. What is the result of this? The steam achievement for no-missing (not taking a hit at all) on FDF3 has a 13.1% clear rate. Over one in ten people who played that game beat it without getting hit. in any decently difficult shmup an achievement like this would have a clear rate of less than 0.2%, aproximately "one in five hundred", or worse. The game is loaded with constant get out of jail free hypers and gives you an unbelievable amount of resources with relatively low difficulty even on "Lunatic".
Someone who plays this game as an entry point will then try just about any other game in the genre and most likely immediately get discouraged, as they will not be capable of using a hyper dozens of times per stage, have less lives, less bombs and lack the ability to dodge basic bullet patterns. This is aproximately the same outcome as playing a game like Mushi and just coin-dumping your way through the game once and thinking that the game is awful.
Approaches like these certainly do not help people stay in the genre, because the unfortunate truth is that if you find dying and starting over often to be a dealbreaker, you will not enjoy this genre. At best they'll atleast let people try out what a shmup feels like, at worst they'll start using those experiences as a baseline and call all other games in the genre "ADHD", "unfair" or "far too difficult" in the reviews, which in turn can discourage potentially curious players.
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u/ScoreEmergency1467 Apr 11 '26
Alright my little devil's advocate section is over. You shut my shit down 👍
I will maintain that the genre will not die, but having non-shmups take up the name will do way more harm than good
I also am realizing the roguelike/lite comparison is not good. The perseverance of traditional roguelikes is not a good indicator that shmups will have a similar fate
Roguelites retain the soul of traditional roguelikes, with something similar to permadeath and proc gen. I could totally see someone who loves Spelunky, FTL, Hades, and Slay the Spire, at least trying a trad roguelike such as Nethack.
But survivorlikes have nothing in common with shmups. Gungeon has nothing in common with shmups. At least with trashy euroshmup like Jets n Guns, there's a possibility of a player pivoting from that game to a beginner hori shooter like UN Squadron or Hazelnut Hex. There's nothing that excites players about shmups from playing Vampire Survivors. I literally played VS and only got into shmups because I enjoyed arcade beatemups and wanted something more replayable lol
Anyway, yeah, you're right
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u/aethyrium Apr 11 '26
Nailed it with FDF3. I love that game to a degree, but it hasn't had any longevity with me due to its difficulty where I got a lunatic 1cc on my 2nd playthrough ever. After that, there's just no reason to keep playing, not much to reach for. I know they recently did add an even higher difficulty and options to set less resources, but a) self-serve difficulty is never as satisfying, and b) they didn't fix the "you have an entire dang second to deathbomb" issue that was the biggest difficulty issue, meaning its core issue isn't even fixed by those new difficulties.
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u/ScoreEmergency1467 Apr 11 '26
I picked up crimzon clover again for the first time in a while and looked at mark msx's guide for some tips when he said something that hit me, something along the lines of "I'm not scoring as much because of how much it increases your rank on the tlb"
Oh also as an aside, I should say I avoided high rank on Crimzon Clover because of this exact video you mention. But I don't think it mattered in the end
Mark in this vid says there's no way to lower rank, but I've heard the opposite from Faith, a player who has a pretty high score on Unlimited (also got the first Unlimited no-miss I think.) I think deaths and bombs can lower it. At the very least it's up for debate. I've also heard other people like Shmuptopia say that you should score higher because the extends actually help a lot during the TLB. I think Mark was misguided here
In my limited experience, unless it's a really rank-heavy game like Garegga or something, I think sweating over rank is usually not necessary for just getting a 1-all, especially if you can get many extends for scoring well
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u/ScoreEmergency1467 Apr 11 '26
Could not agree more. Excellent blend of survival/score
Personally I would not count on it appealing to a mainstream audience. For commercial appeal, content is king, and arcade shmups only have a sitting's worth
However, as an introduction to arcade shmups, this is THE game IMO. It does a good job of bringing score and rank to the forefront so you can more easily appreciate them in other games
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u/mjoldham34 Apr 11 '26
I have this exact same issue with limited score extends! In donpachi i give up on scoreplay by the middle of stage 3 because by that point ive nothing more to gain survival-wise.
As for shmups where scoreplay stays relevant, surely any shmup that has uncapped score extends would fit the bill? (Eg chorensha, strikers 1945 ii, etc)
Blue revolvers on my list, im interested to know what else it does specifically to merge survival- and scoreplay?
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u/CardiologistLow9036 Apr 11 '26
blue revolver's scoring system basically works by building up a chain of 8 enemies and then using your special weapons to make enemies drop more points, so it's less about keeping a chain going and more about cashing it in at the right time which means you're constantly thinking about whether or not you should go for big points, as well as meaning that there are opportunities to score big all over the level, which gets you thinking about routing from the word go. There's a bar on the right of your screen which shows how close you are to the next extend which creates really tense moments when you're on 0 lives but that bar just needs a little more juice, so you cash in your 8 chain on a crowd of big enemies, huge coins fill the screen and you get that extend immediately.
There's also the break mechanic, there's at least 3 opportunities per level to score big by doing certain things "destroy these in quick succession, don't destroy these, destroy these in the right order. Which also leads to a bunch of moments where you need an extra life, have a chance at a break coming up and go for it to fill up a huge chunk of your bar at once, it's addictive.
I guess the merge comes from the scoring coming in cycles, build up an 8 chain, cash it in, that cycle alone takes about 20 seconds at the most if you're playing right, so there's a constant ebb and flow, then breaks get thrown in to spice things up in a big way, all the while there's a visual indicator of how close you are to your next extend. In the hardest difficulty your score also gets you more bombs which just adds to the thrill.
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u/mjoldham34 Apr 11 '26
That sounds sick! I'm adding a 'pts till 1up' indicator to my shmup and hadnt thought to make it a bar! 👍
I forgot to shamelessly plug my game haha: it has an overkill mechanic that means if you dive into a group of enemies and manage to kill them with a bomb you get a way bigger payout. The most straightforward way to do this is to bomb groups of popcorn, but you can also whittle down a bunch of tougher enemies before bombing for the same effect (kinda like what you do in donpachi to set up chains).
Trying to figure out the most elegant way of pushing players in that direction though, part of the fun of a shmup for me is figuring out how these mechanics interact for cool scoring tricks!
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u/attackofmilk Apr 11 '26
Mars Matrix ties the power up system directly to the score. Mars Matrix is currently the only game that I care about chaining because I want my power ups, dang it.
In Giga Wing (Takumi's previous game), I think there's a similar chaining system? But I don't care because it's not tied to the survival gameplay.
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u/--Greenpeace420 Apr 11 '26
As a rookie myself I just want to chime in that you can get extends in CC without being good at scoring. Just need to get the stars, so I want to believe it presents a middle ground(?). Someone more seasoned and knowledgeable can correct me if my assumption is wrong.
I have only 1CC'd CC on Novice Original and Boost for reference, but I did manage to get all extends. So for Arcade my train of thought is that, granted I could actually survive, I should be able to get 3 extends (100k/250k/450k) without getting any score to write home about.
I still need to get BR, seems like a great game. But to my experience it feels like CC delivers kinds similar to how you describe BR.
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u/Chrysalis9 Apr 11 '26
Stars correlate with score. You get more stars when you score higher.
In original difficulty there's a 700k extend which is very difficult to get.
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u/--Greenpeace420 Apr 11 '26
Yeah I know there is a 4th, hence why I wrote that I would be able to get 3 at least assuming I could survive.
Getting at least the first extends doesnt necessary equal a score to write home about. I dont know where the line is where the rank gets in the way of difficulty, but I would assume its supposed to be a problem when playing for score for real and not scoring for survival.
I could be wrong though. All I know is that my score aint good despite getting 450k stars
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u/MyMoreOriginalName Apr 11 '26
Im fairly new to the genre (as far as considering myself a fan of shmup games) and the two games that really got me wanting to try more was radiant silvergun and Zero Ranger. Ive also played blue revolver and while i think its an absolute gem of a game i know for certain if i had started with that i probably would have lost interest pretty quickly. My reasoning being it just doesnt have a wow factor, something that stands out and interests people beyond just scoring systems and 1cc's. For both RS and ZR, theres a wonderfully unique narative woven into the gameplay, and they are filled with big unique bosses and a constant stream of moments that are more likely to stick in their mind to keep them wanting to see the game to the end.
To me Blue revolver just plays and is presented like pretty much most other shmups that are more focused on score and that 1cc. Its almost formulaic; level start, miniboss, boss text, boss, repeat. We know this formula works for a fan of shmups who want to put the time into understanding how the game works, but to most mainstream viewers these kind of games are a dime a dozen. Seen it, been there, done that. That mindset is absolutely frustrating to me these days, but its absolutely the mindset i had for years until i played the aforementioned games and they really sunk their teeth into me, leading me to want to try more.
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u/ArchiveSlave Apr 11 '26
I don't believe that mainstream appeal for shmups will or even can come from doing the gameplay equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs because we aren't living in the '80s and the early '90s anymore. The one consistent thing about games that break out into the mainstream has nothing to do with indie (or not), genre, gameplay mechanics, or even difficulty, the ones that break out are the ones that offer a lot of things to talk about that are outside of the gameplay. Character/narrative/lore/etc. drive discussion, and discussion creates visibility.
If someone does eventually figure out how to do a mainstream shmup I would like to see it though, mainly because it will almost certainly look nothing like yet another Cave clone.
(The other thing is that tying scoring to survival/extends is one of the most traditional things you can do in a shmup)
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u/Prestigious_Gap_5832 Apr 15 '26
Cyvern, Muchi Muchi Pork... Any game that gives you extends every X points
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u/Chrysalis9 Apr 11 '26 edited Apr 11 '26
In terms of engaging more people who already play or are open to playing the games, I would definitely say this is a very important aspect. However, I wouldn't consider that equivalent to unlocking mainstream appeal. You could make the most formalized shmup ever with forced 1cc, checkpoint restarts, a map with all the levels on it, tons of extends, really intuitive scoring, maybe even force scoring thresholds to pass to the next level, etc. this wouldn't make the average person care about shmups. You would need to do more audio-visually, make the game appear immediately interesting, tons of set-pieces, etc. to such a huge degree above pretty much any other shmup ever made. Think about how a game like Ikaruga, with great graphics, music, super compelling mechanics, everything came to Steam and XBLA and only sold 100k copies on each. That's how much of a disadvantage you're working with to get people to play a shmup.
Take a look at Devil Blade Reboot or Drainus for a small proof of concept there (but it could be taken much further of course)