So I have a working prototype for a twin stick shooter for Android (Don't mind the graphics! Good ones are coming! I promise!)

As I was making this prototype, I did a bit of research on the twin-stick genre and found a lot of overlap between games. Most of them work on some sort of kill this xx times til you get a power-up drop that lasts for xx seconds, then revert back to normal. While I like the idea, I'd like to throw in a little bit more RPG-like progression between rounds so I can include some persistant power-ups.

As I keep throwing basic things into my prototype, I find that, at the moment, a 360 explosion of shots works fairly well, and lock-on missiles aren't too shabby either. Also, indestructibility works well but can become overpowered as the enemies increase!

So, here's a question for you guys - what would you like to see in a twin stick shooter? While I am mainly focused on power-up sort of ideas, if you have grievences with other games of the genre, please let me know! Every suggestion is greatly appreciated! While I have a bit developed, I went out of my way to make this code fairly reusable and therefore not too hard to rewrite the control scheme/physics/so on.

I won't mince words: twin-stick shooter is a terrible fit for touchscreen. It's one of the genres requiring the most rapid, most accurate control

That's been a growing suspicion on my part - my best bet so far has been to add some form of auto-aim/aim-asist into the game to help make the game playable, much like Minigore did. Movement wise - I've spent quite a while working on making the controls feel as good as possible, but I'm still going to work at it.

Making interchangable ship parts isn't too bad of idea :-) tho I don't want to go overboard though on customizability and scare people away. Aside from power-ups and maybe different engines, what else would make sense to add to it without it becoming too much?

Omni-directional shooters on a touch screen will be tough.

A design I am working on right now (which would be a great counter-balance to the touch screen problem) is dialing back the action to become more adventure-oriented. Shops/Upgrades could be tied to discovering the world.

I'm sure this has been done before...it almost seems obvious to me. Haven't played a twin-stick (omni-directional) shooter that wasn't completely focused on challenge as its hook.