Over the last month I've been focused on making a small shoot 'em up game. It's called NEOGEAR -Summer Caravan '26-, and you can play it right now! It's available on web, Linux, Windows, and macOS. It features gamepad and keyboard support with configurable input.

You play as Porter, a retired frame pilot, brought back into the fray to fight against the rampant AI known as KAMI.

A caravan mode in a shmup is a timed stage where you compete to get the highest score possible. My current best score is 207200! Can you beat it?

The initial development of NEOGEAR dates back to over 20 months ago, where I started working on it but took a pause until returning to it in a smaller form. I've been working on building up my game dev skills, and I thought a caravan mode would be a great limited scope before diving into the full game.

My pal Chromatic Arcana did the key art and character designs. It was so fun getting to collaborate with him, and I love the way it turned out. Here's some of the concept art.

The game is coded in Lua and powered by Usagi Engine, which is a little game engine I've been making and people seem to be enjoying.

If playing shmups isn't your thing, here's a gameplay video I made:

The key scoring mechanic in the caravan mode is collecting chips by defeating enemies. And when you bomb, it cancels bullets, turning them into chips that you have to go collect. It leads to a satisfying risk reward of trying to maximize score while staying alive.

Now that NEOGEAR -Summer Caravan '26- has been released, I'm going to plan out the full release and begin working on that soon. I've got lots of ideas for enemies, stages, and playable frames, including hinting at more of the world and story that the caravan mode didn't really touch on.

Enjoy and let me know what you think!

Check out NEOGEAR -Summer Caravan '26- on itch.io!