veloper said:
Next is shmups, either sidescrolling or vertical scrolling.
Spaceships and alien blobs don't require much animation. You don't even have to draw different sides of the sprites. Everything is always facing the same way.
Relatively easy to code and to test. No story required. People love them. The only thing you won't succeed in is standing out from the crowd.
As someone who loves the genre, i'm gonna disagree with the idea that making a good shmup is easy. It might be easy to program but unless its space invaders its difficult to make one thats half as good as Gradius, Rayforce or Dodonpachi.
Theres actually alot of thought that has to go into making a good shmup, like Street Fighter which doesn't have that much content (ie just 2 dudes and a background) there's alot of thought that needs to be put into pacing and balancing even if its just to get a good feeling of flow. If the game has any score system (which is a key element of the genre) other than the most rudimentry system then the game is just like any other competative game and needs to be tight designed and balanced and like Tribes or Street Fighter playtested to destruction by expert players.
The problem is unlike other genres not that many ppl understand the genre. Take Sina Mora which on the surface looks like a great shmup, but because of random power ups, its broken for anything other than casual play. Even Konami who made some of the best shmups decades ago no longer know how to make a good scrolling shmup. Their Graduis Spin off series Otomedius isn't even 3rd rate, they had to enlist Treasure to make Gradius V
Back in the 8 / 16bit era when shmups were in their heyday it was common for western devs to try to emulate Japanese shmups like Gradius. Many wern't that good, it's where the term EuroShmup came from, which is used by shmuppers to describe anything thats shitty and broken.
OT
Imo the classic 2D platformer is easiest to make that can atleast be enjoyed in some way by avid platformer players.
I'ld place the shmups twin sister the twin stick arena shooter as an easy genre to do well as unlike scrolling shmups random spawns and waves can be added and it doesn't ruin competative play.
The Beat'em up is to Fighters what twin stick shooters is to shmups, take how popular Castle Crashers is and how simple it's gameplay is even compared to Streets of Rage and Guardian Heroes.
Puzzlers are quite easy too but from watching Extra Credits I know there is alot of thought put into making the Popcap ones as addictive as posible.
While most ppl wouldn't call them actual games, Visual Novels, Eroges and Dating sims are easy to make, just need a good artist and music producer, theres probably more of these games made in Japan each year than everything else combined.
Imo The FPS genre is easiest for western AAA devs to make although much of the ease comes from all the tools and knowhow that the current industry has only because they have been churning them out for decades. TBH it makes me worry for other genres when publishers axe so many studios or put them on making FPS and Kinect games, I can see lots of great talent been lost this way
as much as people don't want to admit it. making video games is an artform, as such it's subject to the same rules of interpretation (ie: i think FPS are shit, while i tend to favor RPGs), so even if they do every thing right and the game is legitimatly good, it can still fail horribly
