Doujin Shmups: an Introduction

By: Derek Yu

On: March 6th, 2007

GDC is goin’ on and Progrium, Alec, and I attended part one of the Independent Games Summit today… but we’ll discuss that once we’ve had a chance to fully recover. For now, I want to introduce to you a new feature that I’ve been cooking up behind the scenes with Postman from Shoot the Core, William Swaney from the2bears, and our very own Tim W. (Independent Gaming):

An Introduction to Doujin Shmups.

Essentially it’s a beginner’s guide to getting into the rather daunting Japanese indie shoot ‘em up scene that we hope will get new players into the genre. Despite the relative simplicity of these types of games, I was surprised by the amount of variation in even a single subcategory of shoot ’em ups. And it’s definitely a genre that keeps growing, as is evidenced by Clean Asia and, more recently, Guxt.

Hope you enjoy!