So I've been getting into SHMUPs recently and they are just fascinating from a modern game design perspective

They are one of the few games left where Highscore is an important part and they innovatived a lot there

They are also the only *genre* I know of that does not use the whole screen for gameplay reasons

They are *extremely* short .
Most games are <45 mins and don't really have a lot of randomness

Everything is focused on mastery and it's kinda beautiful