Kevin Fishburne has released Alpha 5 of his SHMUP for Linux, Sylph: Project Miyaji.

WHAT’S NEW IN ALPHA 5

More music by Mordi (no more placeholder songs by Mecano Associates, Mark Seibert and Joey Carbone and Richie Zito), better bullet and laser collision detection by ordering/sorting ships, partial and full crew ejection from damaged and destroyed ships, proper base stage entry and exit, improved ship ground physics, ship part debris collision detection and deflection and the usual endless rounds of refinement and bug killing. While this is still an early release, I hope the well-documented debug features will prove amusing and a good test of the engine.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR ALPHA 6?

With Sylph‘s “engine” nearing completion I’ll continue to create final assets such as stages/areas, ship models/textures, effective and interesting AI, weapon balancing, score (Mordi) and ensuring a balanced progression across the twenty stages.

You can find install instructions and a list of controls in Kevin’s news post about it. And do check out the gameplay video above!