Fundamentals of Shooter Game Design

2D Shooters

A good many shooters for handheld devices such as mobile phones and tablets use an older, but still popular, camera model that requires only a 2D graphics engine to display. 2D perspectives also remain popular on higher end machines among players who like a retro look and style of play. In most of these games, the game world is shown from either a top-down, isometric, or side-view perspective. Not all these games use only a 2D engine, however; some use a 3D engine to display a 2D perspective just for ease of programming. Many modern 2D perspective shooters include objects that were modeled in 3D and then rendered into 2D sprites for display in the game.

The level design in 2D side-scrolling shooters tends to be similar to that of ...