Programmed in 1996 by imp89 (René Bauer), Blown Eye is a sideshooter game that revived the Shoot'em Up genre by using new artistic options, such as stacking, instead of the previously known tile-based style.

In 1996, Imp89 was deeply immersed in shoot ’em ups, even though their heyday was already over. Back in the days of arcade games and home computers, they were always high-end products. Developers loved them. Shoot ’em ups featured the most moving objects as sprites and even backgrounds that moved. Added to this was a level of complexity involving extra weapons and varying numbers of sprites (shots) on the screen. At the other end of the spectrum was the meaningful bullet-hell shooter. But shoot ’em ups faded from the spotlight of computer gaming in the mid-1990s. They lingered in arcades for even longer. “But their time was slowly running out,” says imp89 (Bauer 2025h). They had also outlived their usefulness as a leading technical medium. “Now 3D was all the rage—or rather, the conversion of every genre into a 3D genre.” (Bauer 2025h) But shoot ’em ups were a major obstacle here, as they required a large number of objects, which would have demanded many 3D assets and more runtime. Furthermore, many shoot ’em ups were simply too difficult.

For these reasons, imp89 wanted to develop a visually appealing horizontal shoot ’em up in the tradition of R-Type (1992). Unlike in most of imp89’s other games, the controls were to be classic. BlownEye (1996) was intended to be a revival of the shoot ’em up genre. The design was also meant to explore new possibilities. The game world was no longer strictly tile-based but also featured stacked elements.

The graphics weren’t particularly abstract this time around. Although the cover art referenced the title, it didn’t show a burst eye but rather realistic owl eyes. It was created by painting over a digitized image of an owl (ibid.)(see: https://www.gamelab.ch/?p=12699. The background graphics were created using Kai’s PowerTools. The icons were drawn by hand, partly in Photoshop and partly as analog templates. The various background and foreground elements could be placed anywhere and on top of one another. The game also featured parallax scrolling. A level editor was included for the world and its moving objects.

YouTube Let's Player YesterYear’s MacGames had a close look at Blown Eye in 2019. He explains that Blown Eye is an unfinished Power PC only game, a side-scrolling shmup that was eventually to contain between four and six worlds with three stages in each. A preview from 1996 gives a taste of what it’s like with Imp 89's typical look and feel. „Controls repeated its prestandardization of WASD to move, so instead, the player attempts to avoid the copious numbers of hostiles with ESDF. There are an awful lot of them, and an attempt to play won’t last very long, dropping the player to the desktop once they’ve lost.“ (YesterYear’s Mac Games 2019)

A later build from 2000 contains more levels and some power-ups and another playable world, and it doesn’t quit after every run. “It’s still obviously unfinished though, the interface is missing all sorts, and the stages are still stupidly difficult. It is a real shame this one never made it through to completion, but with the date on this release being four years after the preview, the project probably started to flounder, and, as I imagine, the members of Impression 89 probably left university, got jobs, and made other commitments that diverted them away from this sort of thing.” (YesterYear’s Mac Games 2019; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX3tH0SNRVU&t=217s)