What I've been up to, take 2:

This.

"Oh my god, it's like 1945 on steroids."

"Wow pretty good. I liked the speed and control and level progression."

"Nice. This is much harder [than a previous build], forces you to cope and change strategy every minute."

"I gotta say this game is tough, and I'm totally okay with that."

I was never in any hurry to get into computer game design, because you can spend so much more time working on the implementation rather than the design itself. I underestimated the siren call the 132 design process would have for me.

Milestone 1 for this game has been to put together a loadout that allows for potent playstyle customization, as the emergent result of small number of choices. This is basically a test for some of my own ideas about how to have the substantive mechanics seen in the "rpg" video game genre, without resorting to artificial reward cycles to keep the player involved. The standard here was (and is) a moderately balanced set of choices that all mattered, so that changing any one of those options has a noticeable effect on the "smart" way to play the game.

This build's aimed at milestone #2: Fun core gameplay. The standard here is for the basic, underlying mechanics to be fun enough (in and of themselves) to make for a passable endless mode. To this end, I've temporarily taken out the options to choose your loadouts; instead, it cycles to a new random arrangement once every 20 seconds.

Feedback and reactions are always welcome. If nothing else, let me know what you think about the different weapons and what sort of scores you can get.