Side Saddle

Side Saddle is a hand-drawn vertical side-SHOOTING shmup.  Shoot left-and-right or diagonally at a menagerie of weird creatures and critters, all of them drawn by hand.  Kill your enemies faster to get more time to recharge your precious ammo; leave them on the screen longer to earn more points and auto-firing turret power-ups.  A challenging and unusual shmup, not for all tastes but very rewarding for those who are up to its high level of challenge and odd twists on shmup game-play.

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  Game Rating

  4

  Callan S. said 3 days ago

  That was interesting, but the control scheme was really bugging me - I hate it when I can't move at a diagnal by pressing two keys at once. Otherwise I want to play it more. I'll give a four, hoping that you change it so you can do diagnals.

  Reply
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  Tom Russell said 3 days ago

  I understand your frustration, and one of the things I changed in Side Saddle 2 is the control scheme. I'll look into reworking the original game with some of the lessons I've learned over the course of the last year, including the controls, but I'm not sure when I'll be getting around to doing that.
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  The second game is different in a lot of ways-- it's a boss battle puzzle shmup with no way to die, no ammo system, and it doesn't have the same art style for another-- but I think it improves on the basic side-shooting and tower-power-up mechanics.