I'm certainly not alone in feeling the stagnation of the genre, of course. However when looking at the 90s shooter, there were tons of other routes that we could have explored instead and I wanted to peek down some of those routes with Tower of Guns. I wanted to keep ToG as simple to pick up as possible, and while I have nothing against more modern shooters (indeed, some are awesome), most of the more recent signature mechanics have been explored to the point of stagnation. "It's absolutely crucial to what makes ToG tick. How important is this old-school vibe to the overall feeling of the game? VGG: Playing the current build I was surprised by how much the skills involved are different from modern shooters, it took me some time to adjust back to the late 90s shooter mindset. This is the exciting part of developing a game, when things progress fairly quick." That means that from here on out the bulk of the work is adding more stuff to the game: bosses, levels, items, arenas, guns, etc. "Well, a lot of the core technology is in place (though, not always bug-free yet). VGG: You've recently released a new build. I'm trying to make a lunch-break game, something that will only take you an hour to beat, but you'll spend many many hours trying to claim that victory." "Tower of Guns is a fast paced first-person shooter with a lot of roguelike-ish elements (such as random level compositing, random enemies and loot), insane bosses, and pretty crazy powerups. VGG: Hi Joe, first of all thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. I asked Joe (the one man army behind Terrible Posture Games) to tell us all about his forthcoming game, art design and the indie life. The game is currently in development (the game is on Greenlight, and you can preorder it on its website and get access to a playable alpha). Tower of Guns is one of them, and it brings its own style to the frantic running/shooting/jumping action, with procedurally generated content and specific art direction. While there is certainly this aspect (at least for those of us who grew up with Doom and Quake), the genre is not all remakes and reboots, far from it, interesting new games appear as developers seek to refine and build on what made late 90s shooters fun.
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Old-school first person shooter is a genre name that evokes nostalgia and fond reminiscences of teenage years spent in the glow of 15" CRTs.