GoKawiilThere is something in shmups that I call “bomb sense”.
Every shmup I love has a common mechanic - smart bombs, a very limited-use item that clears the screen of bullets, deal moderate damage to everything and grant a period of invuln. Often they may have other properties, but this is the important part. Bomb economy is often punishingly strict - taking a hit with bombs in stock will reset the amount - in effective terms, you have just wasted X amount of them for the entire run. No pockets in a shroud.
In every situation, every pattern, every pinch and pin, the player evaluates how they feel at that moment against their game experience - to determine how likely they are to need a bomb, and to hover their finger over the bomb button exactly that much. If their bomb sense is good enough, the moment they feel that lapse, that twinge, that TERROR INSTINCT - a gap in sensation, a mistracked bullet, a mistimed dodge - the bomb may save them within a frame or two.
To use either too many or too few bombs is what really kills you in these games - creating a constant mindgame against the self.
Bombs in Twinkle Star Sprites can slow the game to a crawl, which may help your opponent just as much as yourself.
Bombs make space for strategy. Players may mentally commit to using a bomb ahead of time in problematic parts of the game - and over time, practice more at such parts to obviate the need for the bomb, freeing it up for later. In the face of a dazzlingly mechanically hard game is where resources and planning truly matter – we would not have to think about bombs at all if it was casually possible to blind clear every situation.
With bombs, the one-hit kills of shmups suddenly become much more accomodating than meets the eye. Three lives to start with, three bombs per life – add three or four bonus lives, a handful of bonus bombs, and we now have something like 30 “mistakes” where a bomb or life was consumed over the course of a run - this is astonishly forgiving, and can even compare favourably to games with fluid health systems. But, these are only available if we know and acknowledge our limits.
I love bombs. Bombs are my favourite mechanic of all time. Using them just in time is thrilling in itself, the standard three seconds of invuln providing a tiny moment to catch breath before counterfire. Bombs let me scam my way past things that I am specifically bad at - curvy lasers, left-right sandwich patterns, etc. Having three bombs and a prayer is a lot more exciting and dramatic than having three HP and a prayer. Bombs (and small hitboxes, wink) are the designer putting a finger on the scale and whispering “all things are possible” in the player’s ear, as well they should.
(This is why I tend to dislike health bars in shmups - they reduce emphasis on bombs. I do have a synthesis in mind that I think will be cute, but that’s for another time, I suppose!)
Bombs are by and large a unique mechanic to shmups. The panic button is not, of course, but panic buttons rarely work with such immediacy and certainty as a smart bomb, and the player is rarely trusted with as many.
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