SpaceMerc

Richard Stryker needs money, but because of the current war his only job offer is an admitted suicide mission. Well, at least he gets to blow up a lot of enemy ships.

SpaceMerc is an attempt at creating a bullet-hell style shmup with a longer story and smoother difficulty curve than conventional shmups. The intention is to allow players who don't have as much skill or confidence to be able to get used to the concepts and the sheer amount of shots of a typical shmup without the punishment. The visuals are also kept simpler, so the player can more easily see on the shots they're trying to avoid.

The game contains 30 levels, each with a boss at the end. There are 35 weapons ranging from homing shots to lasers to orbiting spike balls, each with 5 variations depending on how many "units" the player can afford. There's also 6 difficulty levels and an alternate damage mode so you can play the way you're comfortable.

The demo contains the first 11 levels, with 23 weapons usable. At the end, it automatically makes a saved game to continue from if the player buys the full game.

Known bugs: Besides the one mentioned in the installation instructions, the music tracks may fail to start when they should, causing the level select/shop music to play in a level. If this happens, selecting "restart mission" from the pause menu should fix the issue. Sometimes a boss will drift off the screen. If this happens, it should self-destruct once the game detects that it's not longer in shooting range, in the hope that the player won't be too inconvenienced. I was not able to figure out why the bosses drift sometimes.