The idea
Reframe the scrolling shoot-em-up around an imagined conflict across New Zealand, with a local sense of place and a two-player arcade rhythm.
The connection
The project combines encounter choreography, geography and cooperative play. Enemy patterns and boss phases must create learnable challenges rather than rely on visual intensity alone.
System design
The following structure makes the project concept inspectable and defines the implementation to demonstrate.
What would prove it
Build one stage with an opening, escalation and boss. Observe two-player sessions for readable threats, fair recovery and whether both players remain meaningfully involved.
The next complete milestone
A credible vertical slice needs a complete arcade loop, stable frame times on the target machine and a repeatable difficulty test. Additional locations can then reuse the validated encounter tools.
Project record
A two-player scrolling shoot-em-up in the classic mould — fixed and mobile enemy patterns, boss waves — reframed around a fictional drone-warfare occupation of New Zealand, flown the length of the country.
Source: the published APX project register, recovered 28 September 2026. This study explains the design direction and evaluation path; it is not a fresh audit of the product implementation.