Best Amiga Games with NO SHOOTING of ANY KIND?

[Mrs Beanbag]

i guess Moonstone doesn't have any "shooting" in it.. yet plenty of (optional) gore

[fryguy]

Atomix

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Dunny

No love for Merv the Mercyless (sic)? An amazingly violent game with no guns or weapons.

Never played it, I guess I should.

[Photon]

Nice thread Foebane! There are absolute tons. Probably there were as many different game types on Amiga as there are at any one time released now. If you limit it to arcade/action though, you will miss out on so many.

I would say that some games can have guns, and still not feel like a shooter. That would be intriguing. Ideas? Elite 1/2? Sports game with shooting? Some hunting game perhaps?

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by Photon

Sports game with shooting?

Winter Olympics...

https://hol.abime.net/1733

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Winter Olympics...

https://hol.abime.net/1733

Yeah, but isn't that firing at inanimate ceramic objects called clay pigeons?

[Photon]

If we try to define "shooting", it might be something like "the player character or an NPC can spawn an object mid-game which causes direct health damage to the player character or an NPC".

This
- excludes most puzzle games, even action ones
- excludes many non-action games (playing a damage card doesn't count because the card spawn is at the start of the game, not when attacking)
- includes some non-action games, but only if the "bullet" is spawned when the "shot" is taken
- includes Bubble Bobble and similar (bubbles, lightning, snowball)
- excludes Pengo (the "bullet" ice block is pushed, not shot)
- excludes many platformers (except those where you can upgrade to spit tobacco or go inside a cannon to use yourself as a bullet)
- excludes pure racing games, even ones where you use your car to make damage because you can't spawn that car mid-level. you can "shoot" oil slicks because they don't cause direct damage
- excludes martial arts, even those where you hurl yourself as a bullet, because you spawned before you took the action (MA games with Shuriken or magic flame balls counted as having shooting). IK+ is excluded because you don't see that an NPC is spawning the discs, but if an MA game has a single NPC that throws something at you, that game is included (Chambers of Shaolin?) even if you can't shoot back and must use MA.

This broad definition is a bit limiting for both action and non-action games; the typical way a game can challenge a player is to have something the player cares about or causes progress. It might be interesting to explore challenges that can generally stop the player which don't involve spawning a moving object from another moving object, it might then turn into a walking sim/maze game with traps/manager game.

I.e. it could be hard to make difficulty levels and the game might pose no challenge.

[Havie]

Or at the risk of overthinking it - shooting means shooting with a gun!

I'd use the missus as a barometer here as she was always against shooting in any game for Little Hav but had no problem with Bubble Bobble but got very upset over the shooting levels in Rayman (even though technically the dragonfly thing was spitting).

[Photon]

Well, no shooting at all is in the title, and Foebane can define it as he wants without asking anyone else. Now he has some thoughts about shooting to choose from and define it, so we can help better. Thinking is good.

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by Photon

- excludes many platformers (except those where you can upgrade to spit tobacco or go inside a cannon to use yourself as a bullet)

I didn't mention Mr Beanbag in this thread because a lot of the enemies do shoot at you, although not necessarily with a gun as such.. but i would definitely call it shooting, without needing such a rigorous definition. But there are many platformers like this, however i hesitate to name any. Maybe some enemy shoots at you only on the later levels, that i never got up to?

[Photon]

Originally Posted by Mrs Beanbag;1499686a

lot of the enemies do shoot at you, although not necessarily with a gun as such.. but i would definitely call it shooting, without needing such a rigorous definition

+1 exactly it turns out to be difficult to get rid of anything that resembles shooting.

It's an interesting question worthy of thought though, because let's say we rid a game of all of it, and you might end up with a game posing no challenge. But: other ways of posing a challenge have come along (puzzles, looting/crafting/building, strategy, even battle royale could be applied to a non-shooter game, even though it hasn't yet AFAICT).

And shooting an animal for food or to defend yourself in Survival games (no, not zombie/horror/minecraft) feels like the opposite of a "shooter".

If "shooting of any kind" and therefore "character can spawn any object that damages NPC" (or vice versa) is it, then it's a narrow definition. Not really otherwise; it's a base mechanic that can serve purposes other than that. (I.e. launching yourself as a cannonball can damage enemies that happen to be in the way yes, but also to get you over an obstacle or abyss. The game just didn't want to instakill you midair.)