Josh Sutphin
GamesMusicWriting         

Juno

A screenshot from Juno, with some approaching enemies and a tutorial message that reads: Hold S to slow down time.

About the Game

A while back I thought, "What would a shmup feel like if it had bullet time?" I decided to build a prototype to find out. It's called Juno: Destroyer of Worlds.

I was originally going to develop it into a proper game, but at the time I had other obligations and couldn't get around to it; this prototype was as far as I could manage. Perhaps this project will get resurrected one day; but for now, you can download the prototype and find out just how well bullet time fits a shmup.

By the way, the prototype never ends: it just spawns more and more enemies at you as you proceed. There are three enemy types and a boss enemy, and if you play long enough you'll even fight multiple bosses at once!

How To Play

When you start a new game, you can pick two out of the five available weapons. Holding space fires both weapons simultaneously (you have infinite ammo).

When you hold s you activate "slow time". This slows down your enemies and their bullets, but not you or your bullets. So you can fly circles around them. It's awesome. 😎

You have a limited amount of time energy, denoted by the white meter in the lower-right corner of the screen. When it runs out, you can't use slow time any more.

The red bar at the bottom is your rage meter, and it's segmented at each rage level threshold. You gain rage by killing enemies. When a segment of the bar is filled, you gain a rage level: your weapons fire faster, and your time energy and health are refilled.

Screenshots

The equipment select screen from Juno.

A screenshot from Juno, showing the alien swarm weapon active around the player.

A screenshot from Juno, with a mess of bullets and enemies in view.

A screenshot from Juno, showing a drifter enemy.

Created 11/12/2022 • Updated 11/29/2023