Xenon III is a fan-made vertical scrolling shoot-’em-up created with the Shoot-‘Em-Up Construction Kit (SEUCK) for the Amiga.
For the uninitiated, SEUCK was a game creation tool released by Sensible Software that allowed anyone—even without programming knowledge—to design their own shoot-’em-ups by drawing sprites, creating backgrounds, and editing attack patterns. Visually, Xenon III is unmistakably a SEUCK creation. The sprites are functional but lack the polish of commercial Amiga shooters like the original Xenon or Xenon 2: Megablast. The Amiga version of SEUCK was always considered somewhat “lesser” compared to its C64 counterpart, and that limitation shows here. The graphics do the job, enemies are identifiable, your ship is clear, and the backgrounds scroll vertically as expected—but don’t expect the detailed “bas-relief graphics” that made the original Xenon games stand out.
However, the SEUCK engine comes with well-documented limitations. Like many games built with the kit, you can expect issues with sprite lag, slowdown, and flickering when too many objects appear on screen. The difficulty curve can feel uneven, and the game is often described as “poor” by the standards of commercial vertical shooters. Some players have noted that SEUCK games can be “too easy to complete” and feel “rather unfinished”, a criticism that may well apply here. To properly review Xenon III, you have to consider what SEUCK was designed to do. It was a tool for “non-programmers to be creative and play around”, not a professional game development engine. The fact that someone took the time to create a tribute to the Xenon series using this limited toolkit is commendable. The game demonstrates the effort that goes into creating even a basic shoot-’em-up, and for that alone, it deserves some respect.
