PinUp Archery

A little archery range, made by one person

Hi! I'm the solo developer behind Pinup Archery, a first-person comedy archery game. You play a cupid in training, and every cupid has to start somewhere: a toy bow, a quiver of rubber suction-cup arrows, and 1950s pinup posters for practice targets, popping up from behind cover, sliding along rails and ducking away again before you're quite ready. Your goal is simple: stick as many arrows on her hot spots as you can, set a high score, and collect every pinup for your gallery. I wanted to make the kind of game I'd love to find on a lazy evening: simple, relaxing and a little cheeky.

Pull back, hold your breath, let fly. Thwock. The arrow sticks, the board wobbles, the score pops. And when you miss, the game will gently remind you: "Wind. Definitely the wind."

What's in the game

• 18 ranges, each with its own setting: a sunny picnic meadow, a small-town main street, a neon casino strip, Cleopatra's backyard, a Wild West gulch, a racetrack, a fairy-tale kingdom, a tiki beach and more.
  
• 34 pinups to collect, each with her own hot spots and her own Girl of the Month profile.
  
• Three difficulties and a leaderboard for every range and difficulty.
  
• Quick rounds: one quiver and a three-minute clock, so a round takes about two or three minutes. Filling the whole gallery and beating your best score on every range is where the evenings go.
  
• A swing soundtrack: seven breezy instrumental tracks of old-time hot-club jazz, with guitar, violin and upright bass.

Draw, aim, thwock

• Aim, or shoot from the hip: hold the right mouse button to zoom in and raise the sight, hold the left one to draw, let go to shoot. Or skip the sight and fire from the hip: the arrow flies just the same, and every hip-shot hit scores double.
  
• A toy bow that still takes skill: arrows drop over distance and drift in gusty, shifting wind. I spent a long time tuning that feeling, so that a good shot feels earned.
  
• Suction cups that stick and wobble: arrows stick, wiggle and shake the board, or bounce off the stones in the most embarrassing way possible.
  
• Posters that won't wait for you: boards rise from cover, slide on rails and disappear again. Hit them while they're up.
  
• One quiver per round: the round ends when the last arrow lands or the clock runs out, so every shot counts.

Ride the arrow

Land one of the trickiest hot spots and the trick-shot camera chases your arrow in slow motion and watches it land, all the way to the smooch. I still grin every time it happens. (Not in the mood? Press Space to skip it, or switch it off in the settings.)

Hit the hot spots

Every pinup has her hot spots, and each one has its own points, its own reaction and its own little joke. The board pays a little, the girl pays more, and a hot spot pays best. I placed every one of those spots by hand, poster by poster.

• Stack the multipliers: longer shots are worth up to three times as much, moving targets pay extra, hip shots pay double, and a run of hits builds a combo worth up to 3x.
  
• Big, silly reactions: comic callouts, score pops, star bursts and a wobble on every hit.
  
• Three difficulties: Easy, Normal and Hard change your quiver size, how fast the posters move, how strong the wind blows and how much your hands shake at full draw. Bigger risk, bigger score.
  
• Leaderboards: sign the board after a good round and see where you stand.

Collect 'em all

Every pinup on the range is also a card in your gallery. Each girl starts as a dark silhouette. Land a hot spot on her and she's yours, and every spot you hit reveals a little more of her in black and white, from the shoes up, while she waits on her "Still Under Wraps" page. Land them all and she's Pinned Up: her card turns full color, together with her Girl of the Month page with her name, hobbies, turn-ons, turn-offs, ambitions and a signature line.

• A 1950s calendar gallery: themed collections to scroll through, a counter that climbs as you play, and a full-size viewer you can zoom and pan.
  
• A profile for every pinup: I read and polished every one of them by hand. She has opinions about saddle shoes, and she will share them.
  
• Your collection keeps moving: pinups you've started on keep coming back until you finish them.

Straight off a calendar from 1955

I wanted the whole game to feel like flipping through an old pinup calendar in a sunlit garage: pinup illustrations on sturdy poster boards, bright little ranges full of trees, grass and props, menus dressed in satin ribbons, starbursts, halftone and ink, and carefree swing music playing underneath it all.

Good to know

• Single-player, mouse and keyboard. No controller support.
  
• Glamour pinup art of adult women in retro swimwear and dresses, with suggestive poses and cheeky humour. No nudity.
  
• Settings for sensitivity, invert-Y, field of view and graphics quality, plus a Screen shake slider if you'd prefer a calmer picture.

Thank you

Pinup Archery is a small game made by one person, and every poster, sound and joke in it has passed through my hands more times than I can count. Thank you for stopping by and giving it a chance. If it makes you smile, a wishlist means the world to me.