One thing I’ve discovered I love in indie games are ones that are made together by families. I first got exposed to this with “Rainbow Ball into Adventure”, a game where the fun and passion that the family members poured into it is incredibly obvious. Well, though it’s not touted to the hills in the game’s description, “flap!” is nonetheless such a game.
“flap!” is a shoot-’em-up (“shmup”, if you prefer), which differentiates itself by having more of a focus on bombing than shooting. I’ve seen some games that were only bombing, and a few that were mostly shooting with an added dollop of bombing, but I’m not sure I’ve ever run into one where there was shooting but the main goal was bombing. Either way, I’ve definitely never seen one where the majority of the game’s assets were lovingly created by the programmer’s children. But don’t take my word for it, I read this on the developer’s blog:
“Flap started life as a project that I could complete with my children. Both of my children are creative and being children of a modern age are pretty comfortable with computers. One wet Sunday afternoon the discussion was around “what shall we do this afternoon?”
That afternoon the beginnings of Flap were put in place.
Quite a bit of the content was authored by the kids. I didn’t quite manage to get them to do the programming!”
The game has you trying to destroy ground targets (your primary goal) while having to deal with airborne defenders. Dodging and shooting airborne targets works equally well, allowing you to play it your way as you try to bomb the enemy back to the stone age. Worth 80 Microsoft Points if you like traditional (ie. non-bullet hell) shoot-’em-ups and/or quirky games created together by families.
Here’s what the developer (Hal Angseesing) has to say about the game:
“In Flap you are Sir Erin. A brave knight on a quest to free the land of Erda from the rampaging Soastiks. The Soastiks are building magic standing stones to extract the Mana from the ground. Destroy the Soastiks to release Erda from their clutches! Flap is a simple sprite game designed for the xbox 360. It is simple to control and has a range of levels designed for all the family.”
Writings of Mass Deduction 