Ninjet - An Endless Shoot 'Em Up coming soon to Android & iOS!

Hi guys,

We are a group of 4 amateur gamedevs. We've been working on this game using Stencyl for almost half a year now, and thought that we should finally start sharing our progress here!

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Our game is called Ninjet, and it's a vertical shoot 'em up targeting both Android and iOS.

Here are some screenshots:











Ninjet is a pretty standard vertical shmup, but it does have some unique features that sets it apart from other games of the same genre:

• It is endless! You fight through a bunch of enemy waves, and a boss fight follows soon after. Defeating bosses will increase the difficulty of the game. This continues until you lose all your life. Try to aim for the highest score possible!
• You play as a fighter jet that fires standard projectiles, but also has the ability to transform into a Ninja Robot (hence the title "Ninjet")! The Ninja Robot form is invincible and has a melee lightsaber slash attack. This mode has a separate health bar that slowly drains over time, and you must replenish your robot's health points by killing enemies in jet mode. Running out of health in either mode will cause a Game Over.
• The game starts off easy enough for even casual players to enjoy, but gets progressively harder, posing a challenge to even experienced players! Everything from the enemy waves to the bosses in the game get stronger! More health, more damage, tougher wave formations, and increasingly difficult boss attack patterns!

Here is a list of features in our game (both completed and planned):

• 2 control schemes, touch mode as well as tilt mode.
• Chain kill scoring system. Killing enemies consecutively without getting damaged will increase your score multiplier.
• 7 different enemy types with over 30 different attack formations
• 4 different power ups: Health, Jammer, Homing Missile, and Rapid Fire.
• 3 different bosses that return with harder attack patterns each time you defeat them, and a 4th boss that will appear before only those who are worthy!
• Unlockable cosmetic skins using in-game currency or real money. These are purely cosmetic and provide no added advantage during gameplay.
• Local and online leaderboards.

Will share more of our work here soon. Let us know what you think!

Congrats!
Fantastic retro arcade style!

The chain kill scoring system is a really nice idea. Tidy artwork too!

Look forward to seeing what the Ninja Robot looks like.

Having only 7 different enemy types sounds a bit low though, even if they are in different formations. I find what can make these games start to get boring is the lack of variation over time, and with only 7 enemies that is my biggest fear with your feature list.

Look at all the Crossy Road nuts that love to collect the characters, in total there are 115 characters now I think. I know its a different kind of game but it shows how variation can keep hardcore fans hooked, even if the gameplay stays similar/identical.

Congrats!
Fantastic retro arcade style!

Thanks for the kind words! Appreciate it.

The chain kill scoring system is a really nice idea. Tidy artwork too!

Look forward to seeing what the Ninja Robot looks like.

Having only 7 different enemy types sounds a bit low though, even if they are in different formations. I find what can make these games start to get boring is the lack of variation over time, and with only 7 enemies that is my biggest fear with your feature list.

Look at all the Crossy Road nuts that love to collect the characters, in total there are 115 characters now I think. I know its a different kind of game but it shows how variation can keep hardcore fans hooked, even if the gameplay stays similar/identical.

Thank you, appreciate the feedback! I can totally see where you're coming from, and we would have loved to have even more enemy types. However, considering this is our very first game, we had to limit our scope. We're hoping that the variations in enemy wave formations, gradual difficulty increase, as well as the 4 bosses that get tougher attack patterns each time you beat them will be enough variation for now. We'd love to add more content into the game, but as of right now, we're working hard to get the game ready to be properly tested on Android and iOS, as well as making sure the game is bug-free.

We do plan on adding some unlockables in the form of cosmetic skins, since we know a lot of players enjoy collecting stuff as well (like in Crossy Roads).

Thanks again for the feedback! 

Looks stylized and neat! I look forward to playing it

Looks stylized and neat! I look forward to playing it

Thanks man!

Sorry for the lack of updates guys, we've been hard at work tweaking stuff and ironing out a lot of bugs!

For now, we'd like to share with you our enemy designs.

First up, here are the typical baddies that you will encounter. They will appear in waves, in a variety of attack patterns. We've designed a fixed amount of attack patterns, but we've added some randomness to each attack pattern so that they are never quite the same each time!



From left to right:

• Charger - These guys are the simplest enemies in the game. They appear at the top, and accelerate straight to the bottom of the screen while shooting at the player.
• Seeker - These guys are one of the more beefy enemy types. Not only do they have a lot of health, they also fire homing projectiles that will track the player's position for a while.
• Sidewinder A - These guys appear in groups of 5, and move in a synchronized sine wave. They fire normal projectiles at the player.
• Sidewinder B -Similar to their purple-colored brothers, they move in a sine wave (with a much bigger amplitude). The difference is that these guys appear in pairs (one on the left side of the screen and one on the right), and  each one fires a pair of projectiles split into 2 directions.
• Banker - They generally appear from the top, and move in a curved fashion, exiting the left or right side of the screen. Each one fires 3 bullets at 3 fixed angles. At higher difficulties, Bankers can also appear from the bottom of the screen!
• Exploder - The Exploders can appear from anywhere on the screen. They spawn from "beneath" the player, so it's important to keep moving to avoid getting hit by them. The Exploders are stationary, and only shoot projectiles towards the players at fixed intervals. However, as their name suggests, destroying them will cause them to explode, releasing a lot of projectiles! 
• Gunship - These guys will charge up and fire laser beams at the player, so it's important to destroy them before they can fully charge their beams. At higher difficulties, their laser beams will even track the player's movements, making it much harder to dodge!

Destroying the enemies above and maintaining a high score multiplier is crucial towards obtaining a high score. However, score enough points, and you will be greeted by bigger, stronger, foes. Meet the bosses:



Since the basic enemies have a very simplistic/cutesy pixel art style, we thought it'd be cool if we created some contrast by making the bosses huge and a lot more detailed! From left to right:

• Giant Crab Bot - Much like the smaller Chargers, This boss can charge towards the player. Considering its size, dodging this will not be easy! This boss also fires giant projectiles, and summons smaller Chargers that shoot and charge towards the player.
• Giant Fly Bot - This guy is one of the more annoying bosses. He will summon 2 turrets that constantly shoot at the player, while firing giant homing projectiles and releasing time bombs that will cause a projectile explosion if not destroyed quickly enough!
• Giant Eye Thing - As you can see from the screenshot, this thing has 6 eyes. The 3 smaller eyes fire standard laser beams, whereas the big eyes will fire huge, screen-filling laser beams. Better have a shield power-up at the ready!
  

The 3 main bosses in our game will appear in a randomized order. 3 bosses may seem like a pretty small number, but remember that defeating all 3 bosses (in any order) will cause them to "level up" and get stronger attacks the next time you meet them. So you're gonna need some serious skill if you want to beat the bosses at higher levels!

Let us know what you think! There's one more boss left though, but he's a bit different from the rest of the bosses. We hope to show him off in our next post

Wow this looks awesome, love the style. Let me know if you need you need any beta testers, are you going to use testflight?

I'm really liking the art and colour palette.

Wow this looks awesome, love the style. Let me know if you need you need any beta testers, are you going to use testflight?

Thanks for the kind words! We're not too sure yet, but we will keep you posted if we do

I'm really liking the art and colour palette.

Thank you! Means a lot to us

Right now, we've finished most of the core features in our game and we're currently working on getting mobile-specific features into our game (online leaderboards/IAP), starting with Android.

First up, here's one of the music tracks in our game. It's the stage BGM, and you'll be hearing it the most as you play the game. Check it out here and let us know what you think! :

https://soundcloud.com/ninjetost/cool-neon-asteroids/s-sN8ex

As promised, here are some in-game screenshots of our bosses, including the 4th boss.

The green crab boss


The 6-eyed boss uses its small eyes to fire laser beams at the player, and opens its larger eyes to fire bigger laser blasts.


The giant fly boss sends out 2 flying bug turrets to annoy the player, while it deploys time bombs that will explode if you don't destroy them before their countdown reaches 0.


Although you may face the 3 default bosses at any point in the game, you will only face the 4th boss if you are able to defeat 6 bosses (i.e. 2 boss cycles) in a single playthrough. The 4th boss has been designed to be the arch-nemesis of the Ninjet, hence we've decided to call it "The Shinobot" . As you will see, it can also transform between robot and jet forms!

This is what the Shinobot looks like:


Here's a few GIFs of some of the Shinobot's attacks as well:

Bouncing spinning blades, shurikens, and jet mode rapid fire


1st desperation move (activates when health goes below a certain %): Shadow clones + Shuriken attack


Final desperation move!


That's all for now. Will post another update soon!

Just to give you a rough idea of how the difficulty scaling for our bosses works, here are some screenshots:

Level 1


Level 2


Level 3


So as you can see, the bosses will start off fairly easy, allowing even beginners to beat with ease. However, the more you defeat them, the stronger their attacks will become.

On a separate note,  we've also finished developing  an in-game store that allows you to to purchase different skins/jets using in-game currency. We are still working on adding more skins to the game, and hope to have at least 6 skins on release. Here's a screenshot:



We've also added a "Rank" system, which rewards players with a medal based on how many bosses they were able to defeat.  Since our game is endless and revolves mostly around trying to get a higher score than before, we thought that adding collectible medals would appeal to players who are looking for some sort of "end goal".  Although both score and rank reflect the player's performance, getting a high score is more dependent on maintaining a long score multiplier, whereas earning a high rank  depends purely on how many bosses the player is able to get through. Players who are not interested in competing on the global high score leaderboards can instead aim to "beat" the game by earning all 14 ranks/medals in the game (even though the game still continues beyond that rank).

As you can see, players will be given a rank (medal) at the Game Over screen:



And they can view all of their unlocked medals in the Trophies page:



That's all for now!

looks good!

i love these games!! ill download for sure!

Hi, everyone. It's been a while since our last update, and we apologize.

Due to some internal issues, our game has been delayed for quite a while.

Now, we're happy to announce that our game has been released for the Google Play Store! Unfortunately, the iOS version is still on hold for the time being.

Please try the game out and let us know what you think!

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pixelmystique.ninjet&hl=en

downloading now! will rate it