Build them up to knock them down

Bulo Studio gives aspiring developers the tools to create full-blown shoot-'em-ups without coding

Putting serious effort into the 2D shooter genre as a player can feel like a deconstruction of the form unearthing arcane mechanisms and dissecting scoring systems that lurk below the visuals very much a process of unpicking the work of game designers. In their most purebred form, unembellished by narrative acrobatics or any meaningful moments of downtime, 2D shooters present an experience where playing can feel something like direct interaction with the code itself a dance with intersecting multipliers and numerical gauges played out as a flight through dangerous skies.

All of which means that playing a shmup can sometimes feel close to the process of making one. Spend time in an arcade community, and you may well hear 2D shooter players ponder how different scoring systems in hypothetical games might work. Bulo Studio's new game-making software Shmup Creator seems to have been made for exactly that kind of person, offering a complete game development toolbox specifically geared towards making various forms of scrolling shooter - and in adopting a 'no-code' approach it means users can build complete games with no need at all to embrace programming.