Shoot 'em up Construction Kit

The Good
Shoot-'Em-Up Construction Kit (SEUCK) is not a game but, as the title suggests, software that lets you construct your own game. Although the main focus is on shoot 'em ups, you can make any old game, including an Ikari Warriors clone. I looked at the sample games on the second disk, and found out that they were similar in style to the games that I played on the Assassins PD Collection.

SEUCK was the work of Sensible Software, the guys who brought us Cannon Fodder. Its root can be traced back to a graphics utility for the Commodore 64 called Worldmaker, but the author was pressured by Sensible to expand upon it so that it would let the end-user make games, not just play them.

The program delivers a user-friendly interface that allows the user to create sprites, objects, graphics, sounds, and more, and lets them alter certain characters such as attack waves. You can make your own assets using programs like DeluxePaint or a sound-creation program, or just use the ones the developers supplied. SEUCK demonstrates the time and effort developers go through in creating just a basic shoot 'em up. Every sprite and their animation has to be planned on paper first before creating them on the computer. I made my own sprite assets, each with its own animations but used the sound effects the developers supplied. That is as far as I got.

There are sample games on the second disk and they are all fun to play. They all have well-designed title screens. There are only three games on the disk, and my favorite one was PsychoBlast, where you have to shoot a variety of enemies in a level before time runs out. The other ones work as they should.

The sound effects have the same quality from other shoot-'em-'ups of its heyday. Over twenty sounds were composed by Richard Joseph, who also did the effects for Barbarian II. I found the effects for PsychoBlast amusing.

The Bad
Nothing that I know of.

The Bottom Line
As I said earlier, SEUCK demonstrates the time and effort needed to develop a game. Don't expect a game to be completed in five minutes, as some planning is required if you want it to work properly; and since SEUCK came out in the late Eighties, don't expect your game to be state-of-the-art. Those who just don't like to waste time creating their game and focus their time and energy on something else should steer clear.