Downloading now. Looks like there is a multiplayer server so maybe we can get a game going at some point.

I will take a look when I get home. Nice that the front page doesn't bury the lead, "Space Diablo." It would be interesting if a game allowed for the cream to rise a bit more than Diablo and its progeny.

It seems we're slipping. :/

[edit]

I thought it looked really cool so i went to try it out and the game just crashes when i double click on the .exe. It doesn't even think about it... is this some sort of dynamically generated crash-simulator and i missed the post about it?

is it one of those "run as administrator" or "run in Win 98 compatibility" or something similarly easy? Anyone been able to make this work?

I did not have an issue on My XP machine. Have not tried it in vista yet.

N... Maybe! Shut up! Your face is redistributable!

Wow that video really sold me on the idea, is this multiplayer, or does it upload prefereences to the web from your single player game?

OK, impressions... The art is a little meh. Your ship looks like a cross between a fighter from Galactica and 1950's concept of the future, with a huge rack of three guns on the bottom. The enemies looks cool, but of course you don't get to use their models.

As for the weapons themselves, I feel there's a lot of potential but it's not "there" yet. Often I'd get a run of 3, 4, 5 weapons that were not only identical but very standard (shoots forward!) but with VERY slight variation, like a different color shot, or a slightly slower or faster speed. Occasionally I'd get one that was pretty much useless, like one that fired a shot to my left (and only my left), which would travel to the edge of the screen and then go straight. Good luck hitting anything with that. In fact, my first unusual weapon fired a single shot forward and two off to the sides, a little like the "tunnel gun," except it fired all three streams BACKWARDS.

Not only do the color-cycling shots ruin the immersion a bit for me, but I can't help but feel like they're a lost opportunity. What if green shots were those energy bolts, yellow ones were the waves, purple ones were the squiggles, and then all the other colors were something else? Missiles? Bullets? Beams? That way even if you got a weapon that was statistically the same, it might FEEL very different.

It also seems that the only interesting things the weapons do is create a pattern. No tracking, no damage over time, now slowing enemies down or stunning them, etc. Seems like another lost opportunity.

I also felt a real lack of progression with getting new weapons. In Diablo, you're always getting better and better. In shooters, you can typically power up each available weapon through a few levels. In GAR, bullet patterns don't seem tied to your level or enemy levels and don't seem to get any more complex as you get deeper into the game. Just different. And damage appears to be based on your skills rather than the weapon itself.

Still, this strikes me as a tech demo more than a real game, and as a tech demo it's very impressive and I hope to see the idea of procedurally generated weapons in other games.

EDIT: Oh, and I agree with Dvowels. TERRIBLE controls.

... Oh. Huh. Well, that's good to know.

I was never a big fan of Star Trek and always found that flipping a battery around did not make my walkman play in reverse.