In itch io game setting, i have categorized my game Song of Morus: Laments On the Brine in third person shooting game. But I personally feel it's a hybrid game. And here is why.

There is marketing phenomenon that America/Europe has a great flavour on FPS/TPS shooting game, and Japanese has no interest at it generally. Not saying that this is a physics law with no exception, ut I do like to respect the existence of a tendency/stereotype, so that i can figure out why. My current idea is that, the western gamers like to "be" the characters, self-insert to the protagonists and do decisions based on players' self, while the Japanese gamers like to "watch" the characters, and enjoy their story. Not sure if this guess is true, but it inspires me to try something in between. 

 Song of Morus: Laments On the Brine is technicially a Over-The-Shoulder third person shooting game. The camera is following the character's back and her action direction is based on camera. However, I add a rare mechanic that the character would turn their body direction based on movement. With a farther camera distance to show the character full body, player can see her from other direction apart from the back. This is supposedly just a small experimental element but it triggers a butterfly effect in my game.



First,  because it's full body. Player has greater view to locate the position between protagonist and slow moving bullets, this makes bullet hell mechanic doable in my game. Although it can't be as crazy as shump game, it still can handle quite some scale of 3 dimensional bullet hell without being unplayable, as long as it has a good bullet size ratio comparing to character height. In case you would know, the bullet size and design is taking the game Nieras reference.

Second, as the player can see protagonist 's feet and the spot she is standing on, this makes platform game mechanic doable in my game. I havn't fully explore this part in current content yet, and right now player only need this mechanic to dodge bullets with character's quintuple jumps ability. But if i have to extended this project, i may create a stage requires player to jump between boats, or a fully platform jumping stage. That sounds like a fun idea.

Third, because of the camera distance, some of friends thought this is an action game when watching my trailer. If it's visually like action game, then it can handle some amount of action game mechanic. Maybe I can create melee feature, and player can instinctly feel how to seamlessly shift between action game like melee and TPS game like shooting? I don't have any plan to experiment this yet, but maybe I should.

Forth, this game has adopt lots of SHUMP game flow. You have no freedom to explore a map or simply stay. Your character is constantly moving forward dealing with waves of bullet hell. The boss is always on spot that you have to constantly shooting. I feel that It's possible to add even more SHUMP game elements. For example, the boss can spawn some floating score/power items for player to collect.

In conclusion, I quite like what i developed in this game jam submission. And I feel it has potential to handle much more fun and unique content. If you havn't tried my game, please have a try and give feedback