This is a game I am designing. Its code name was Project Taurus. Now it is Mars Colonization War. Gameplay: It is a horizontal shoot 'em up, where the player controls a ship. The player can use a "shield" by holding a button, until a decreasing bar reaches zero. Levels: There are four locations: Earth's orbit, Moon's orbit, space (going from the Moon to Mars) and Mars' orbit. Each of these locations has two levels and a boss. Challenges: The main challenge is to reach the end of the story. Each level has also a harder version. Each level (normal and hard versions) has also an optional challenge, where the player should destroy all enemies. Upgrades: By completing each pair of levels of a location (normal and hard versions), the player gets an upgrade for the ship. These include upgrades for resistence, shield duration, shooting interval, shooting power, etc. The story:

Quote: Around the year 2100, the superpowers of the Earth begin colonizing other planets of our Solar System. The same thing that always happened in the Earth also happens in the space: wars for territories. Two of the greatest superpowers are the republic of Raken and the republic of Lyjok. The Moon was a colony of Lyjok and Mars was a colony of Raken, until Lyjok takes it by force. Then Lyjok installs its powerful fortress in the orbit of Mars. Raken sends many ships to attack Lyjok's fortresses, but fails, until it sends the only unit of its most powerful ship: SWX-7000. The targets of the SWX-7000 are Lyjok's fortresses from the orbits of the Moon and Mars.

What do you think, guys?

Both the story and gameplay seem very simplistic. They have that old school sort of 8 bit arcarde feel to them. If that's what you are going for then the story should be enough. Not too complex, a straight forward plot, and a single objective.

Is there some reasoning behind the faction names that I'm not aware of? They look as if they came from a random name generator, and not a particularly good one. I'd suggest changing those.

Other than that, it looks more like a game design topic. The design sounds like it could be fun, though (if done properly).

It sounds like a solid design that's simple enough that one won't get bogged down in feature-creep. More importantly, it sounds like something that has a reasonable chance of actually being completed. Looking forward to seeing the results.