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Independent Developer - Sci-Fi Arcade Studio

Three battlefronts.
One developer.
No safety-net.

One Man Army Games is a solo-run studio making arcade-blooded games, every sprite, shield and beam coded, drawn and tuned by a massive crew of one.

Play Darkstar View All Games
03Games in Orbit
01Live Release
02In Active Dev

Darkstar

CLASSIC ARCADE SHOOT-'EM-UP

Live
The Lineup

Three games. Three ways to fight.

A formation shooter, an orbital defense grid, and a beam-runner rebuilt in 3D — each one built to feel unmistakably arcade, and unmistakably its own.

Available Now

Darkstar

A Galaga-styled shoot-'em-up - formation waves, dive-bomb runs, and a score chase built for one more credit.

FORMATION - SCORE CHASE Details
Playable Demo

ExoShield

Guard Earth from rogue satellites and falling debris - softly, softly. You don't want to set off a chain reaction.

ORBITAL DEFENSE - POWER MGMT Details
Prototype

Beamrider-X

The arcade classic Beamrider, rebuilt fully in 3D — weave a live energy corridor deep in enemy space.

3D RAIL COMBAT - BEAM-GRID Details
REC
Montage Reel — Cockpit Feed
Field Footage

View in game.

This reel is actual gameplay, pulled straight from each build — not a produced highlight reel. A fully edited montage for your enjoyment.

Follow Progress in the Devlog
Transmission Log

Latest updates

Beamrider-X

From 2D rails to a 3D corridor

Where is the alien swarm?

Read the entry ?
ExoShield

The time-budget problem

Still a little work to do on this but coming along nicely. Where does the time go. Was that a deadline? Oops, that flew by ;¬)

Read the entry ?
Darkstar

Formation tuning pass

Reworking dive-bomb timing after two months of post-launch scorechasing data.

Read the entry ?
Games Showcase

Every ship. Every system. One dossier each.

Full breakdowns of what's built, what's playable today, and where each title is headed next.

Available Now

Darkstar

CLASSIC ARCADE SHOOT-'EM-UP - GALAGA-STYLE FORMATION COMBAT

Darkstar is a love letter to the golden age of the vertical shooter. Waves of enemies swarm into formation overhead, break off into dive-bomb runs, and punish hesitation — built around the same read-and-react rhythm that made the genre addictive in the first place, with modern scoring, chaining, and a CRT-tuned presentation.

  • Hand-tuned formation with escalating dive patterns
  • Combo scoring built for leaderboard chasing
  • Boss waves every seventh sector
  • CRT-style presentation with selectable scanline intensity
Play Darkstar Darkstar Devlog
In Development — Demo Live

ExoShield

ORBITAL DEFENSE - REAL-TIME SHIELD MANAGEMENT

Earth is under fire from its own junk. In ExoShield you command a ship trying to intercept rogue satellites and falling debris before they reach the surface. Can you clear your sector without causing a massive chain-reaction?

  • Unique look and style, as a nod to the geat Jeff Minter.
  • Escalating debris fields with distinct threat types
  • Real-time play with visible impact consequences
  • Wave-based survival with a growing threat clock
Core SystemsPlayable Demo Available
  • Combat loop & destruction controls
  • Different styles of craft create unique play styles.
  • Boss-class debris encounters — in progress
  • Shield upgrades — planned
Play the Demo ExoShield Devlog
Prototype

Beamrider-X

3D RAIL SHOOTER - BEAM-GRID COMBAT

A ground-up reimagining of the arcade classic Beamrider, rebuilt as a fully 3D on-rails battle down a live energy corridor. Instead of five fixed lanes, you weave a beam-grid in three dimensions, dodging incoming fire while lining up torpedo strikes to clear a sector in one shot.

  • Full 3D beam-grid movement, not a fixed 2D lane
  • Sector-clearing torpedo strikes with limited charges
  • Depth-based enemy waves emerging from the corridor
  • No prototype, unfortunately I would have to remove too much of the good stuff to make a version playable on the web.
  • Procedurally generated corridor sectors
  • Boss corridors with multi-phase encounters
  • Plenty of tuning to do on this. Now is the time to get on the High Score table.
Watch the Demo Video Beamrider-X Devlog
Devlog

Behind the cockpit glass

Chronological notes from development — the decisions, the dead ends, and what's shipping next. Filter by game to follow one title at a time.

02 SEP 2026
Darkstar

Complete Rewrite

I spent a lot of time on this, getting it ready for the AGK game jam. Unfortunately, when I was finished I was disappointed with the result. No real smoothness, code that looked like spaghetti junction. So I have decided to try rewriting it in Godot. I am concentrating on trying to get the movement smoother and then I can look at what I can improve. I am really getting used to the workflow in Godot and it is much easier to create smoother, more reliable games. Wish me luck.

30 AUG 2026
Beamrider-X

The Alien Horde

The original Beamrider had a particular threat which appeared every level, the alien swarm. You can not kill them, all you can do is run and hide. Can you avoid them?

I am currently adding them to the game and tuning them as we speak. I will upload the web version as soon as I am satisfied it plays well.

27 AUG 2026
Beamrider-X

From 2D rails to a 3D corridor

The original Beamrider locks you to five horizontal lanes. The first Beamrider-X prototype copied that structure in 3D and it felt flat — you could see depth, but you couldn't use it. This week's build throws out the lane grid for free beam-weaving across the full corridor cross-section: enemies now approach from genuine 3D positions, and dodging is a real spatial read instead of a lane swap. It breaks a lot of the old collision code. Worth it.

22 AUG 2026
ExoShield

The power-budget problem

Debris density now ramps every level turns what started as a thought experiment into a game, albeit unfinsihed.

14 AUG 2026
Darkstar

Formation tuning pass

Two months of post-launch leaderboard data made one thing obvious: everyone was chaining sector three the same way, because the dive-bomb timing there had a predictable gap. Restaggered the release windows per formation row and added a rare "feint" dive that breaks the read. Early scores dropped slightly — which is exactly what a tuning pass like this should do.

05 JUL 2026
ExoShield

Public demo build is live

The first playable ExoShield demo is up at the game's page. It covers the basic core loop — shows off some of the variation in the player ship, and allows me to check the web version.

02 JUN 2026
Darkstar

Launch retrospective

Darkstar was the first title to go from prototype to finished game solo, start to finish. The formation system took the longest by far — getting waves to feel hand-choreographed while actually being procedural ate most of a month on its own. The biggest lesson: build the scoring and chaining systems early, not last. They ended up reshaping how the levels were paced.

18 MAY 2026
Beamrider-X

Prototype week one: can this even work?

Beamrider-X started as a question, not a plan: does the tension of the original Beamrider — weaving lanes while managing limited torpedoes — survive the jump to full 3D, or does it just become a generic corridor shooter? First playable build says yes, barely. Movement feel is still too floaty and enemy readability needs work, but the core tension is there. Building on it.

Pilot Dossier

Mike

Founder - One Man Army Games

Role
Design - Code - Art - Everything
Base
onemanarmy.games
Focus
Arcade-rooted sci-fi
Status
Three titles in orbit
About the Studio

One person, every department.

One Man Army Games is exactly what it sounds like: a solo operation, where the same person writes the code, draws the ships, tunes the difficulty curve, and answers the email. There's no separate art team to hand a screenshot to, and no separate systems team to argue balance with — every tradeoff gets made once, by whoever is at the keyboard that day.

That constraint shapes what gets built. Rather than chasing scope that would need a studio to finish, every project leans into arcade fundamentals — tight loops, readable threat, a score worth chasing — because that's where a solo build can compete with games made by much bigger teams. Space is the constant backdrop, not because it's easy to render, but because it's the right stage for that kind of game: clean silhouettes, high stakes, nowhere to hide.

Darkstar shipped first because it was the smallest, sharpest idea. ExoShield and Beamrider-X are both in active development now, moving forward in public — the devlog above is the real build log, not a highlight reel.

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