Heli-Cats

**Heli-Cats** is a 2D Arcade shoot-em-up game developed by Troy "DrearyWeary" Chin from Singapore. While the game is still in development, a demo of the game was released on 4th April 2023 .

## Story

With the world facing a desperate energy and economic crisis, rogue forces have launched a coordinated assault on a weakened allied order. Unable to respond directly under the fragile political climate, the Joint Security Alliance has turned to a special helicopter squadron known as the Heli-Cats. Take control of pilots “Tiger” and “Lynx”, either together in a single helicopter or individually in two machines, as they battle their way through enemy lines and uncover the reasons behind the instigations. Their mission is to repel the invaders under the guise of a local paramilitary unit such that all actions can be disavowed should things go wrong .

## Gameplay

As an arcade shoot-em-up, the game involves shooting at a constant stream of adversaries while avoiding their attacks and navigating through intricate patterns of bullets and obstacles. In Heli-Cats, you can control two helicopters with different abilities and weapons. The core challenge in a the game is to defeat waves of enemies. These enemies come in various forms and patterns, often becoming progressively more challenging as you advance through the game. In order to upgrade players' helicopter, players can collect enemy orb to power-up their helicopter arsenal. When power-up bar is full, player can use it to increase burst damage of the bullets however if the bullet did not reach to enemy's helicopter then the power-up bar will gradually decrease.

## Characters

In Heli-Cats, there are two characters prominently appears throughout the game, the characters itself are part of the story as well as gameplay of the game.

* **Tiger,** a young pilot controlling Heli Cat-A and notorious for able to focus throughout the war zone.
* **Lynx,** a pilot controlling Heli Cat-B, known for its speed and powerful shots.

## Development

According to the creator of Heli-Cats Drearyweary, Heli-Cats shoot 'em up mechanic is inspired by Sonic Wings/Aero Fighters, Strikers 1945, and Gunbird series. The reason behind the inspiration is due to how challenging the game and during the mid 1990s, the game was cult classic and attract players to put their skill to the test. The difference with old shoot 'em up games and Heli-Cats are the game was born out of the desire to make a new shooting game with that simpler but solid gameplay from popular shoot em up developers like Psikyo with some extra elements thrown in. The main extra addition is the dual-elevation feature, which most experienced players would compare with Ikaruga's polarity system .

On 1st February 2023, A teaser was made on twitter showcasing one of Drearyweary's work. According to the creator, the game will be based on one of his popular genres specifically arcade shoot 'em ups . A month later the dev released an announcement stating a demo of Heli-Cats will be coming soon and it will be released on April 2023 . On 4th April 2023 a demo of the game was released. Heli-Cats was also featured during Steam Shmup Fest 2023.

## Trivia

* Heli-Cats is inspired by Sonic Wings/Aero Fighters, Strikers 1945, and Gunbird series.

## Official Links

* Heli-Cats Official Steam Page
* Drearyweary Official Twitter
* Drearyweary Website
* Drearyweary YouTube

## References

1. ↑ [1] Demo release announcement via Steam
2. ↑ [2] Story description from Heli-Cats Steam Page
3. ↑ [3] Steam.com article "Game Details 1" written by Drearyweary
4. ↑ [4] "As I slowly get better at developing games, I finally decided to make one in my favorite genre..." via @drearyweary on Twitter
5. ↑ [5] Steam.com article "Heli-Cats Demo Coming Soon" written by Drearyweary