Zell Menace

Sorry for being a bit late with posting this one here.  Zell Menace is a vertical shooter made during TOJam 13, a weekend game jam hosted every year in Toronto in May. Instead of the typical powerups and bullet-hell of shooters, this game has money drops so you can upgrade your ship, and shield/armor so your ship can take multiple hits of damage (in this regard, similar to Tyrian). However, you only get one life to beat the game, so be sure to upgrade your ship so you can make it through the 5 levels and beat the boss.

The Default Controls:
Move ship: Arrow Keys
Fire Lasers: Space
Fire Homing Missile: Control
Upgrade Forward Weapons: 1
Upgrade Diagonal Weapons: 2
Upgrade Homing Weapons: 3
Upgrade Generator: 4
Upgrade Shields: 5
Upgrade Engine: 6
Upgrade Armor: 7

This is really nice - controls very smoothly and I like the choose your own upgrade system.

I'll say this looks similar to Tyrian in more ways than one... Looks great, time to play!

Edit: yup, this was a lot of fun for a while. It wasn't immediately obvious what upgraded what without referring back to your post, but it's fun to blast through all of the ships like this. One downside is how quickly the difficulty suddenly ramps up on the level with the big boss ships though, and that once you die, you start over all the way from the beginning instead of just the start of the level.

I'll say this looks similar to Tyrian in more ways than one... Looks great, time to play!

Tyrian.... One of the greatest games ever. Way back when, one of my friends and I would connect via modem and play Tyrian.

@Beaker Is there a Carrot ship with a Banana Blaster?! lol

Tyrian is one of my favorite shmups so seeing something inspired by it certainly makes me happy. Although I like playing it with the mouse