I had a disk of this game some years ago of a game I'd like to try again, but I can't find the disk or remember the name of the game. It was a topdown space shooter where you were some sort of hunter looking for these blue energy gem type things. The game had "unlimited levels" because each one was procedurally generated and had a few different objectives. One being find a number of these blue gems, kill a certain number of aliens, or you find yourself in a feild of gems or weapon pickups for a certain amount of time. I remember that you could pick up sheild energy that was purple, and some of the aliens could hold the blue things. Each level ended with a teleporter of some kind. Some of the weapons included red lasers, green lasers, a mace attached to your ship via a chain and mines. Does anyone know what game this was?
It wasn't a bullet hell.

Reminds me of this little excellent game: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Quest

Ah, that wasn't it. I did forget to mention it was a Windows XP era game.

I always thought the plague that is proceduraly generated levels was rather recent. I guess not.

I can only assume that the game you mention was one of the first to do this, so I'm actually curious to see if there was ever a time when procedural generation was done right.

Seriously?
You do there is a reason they are called 'roguelikes'? As in they are like the game [url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(video_game)]Rogue[/url], from 1980.

Procedural generation has always been a thing, in the past it was just probably the domain of free games and projects whereas no it's more mainstream because of indie Devs.

I was referring to proceduraly generated levels. However since you mentioned Rogue, I realize that Rogue also had proceduraly generate levels, so you are right the practice is much older than my supposition, that this mysterious shooter game is named might have been "one of the first to do proceduraly generated levels".

However, while I never played the original Rogue, I have yet to play a roguelike/roguelite or any other type of game that has proceduraly generated levels, where the level design was anything more than generically bland.

There are various types of procedural generation, the most basic type used by Rogue and most roguelikes is to generate random boxes and connect them with random paths. Which is generally fairly bland and samey.
You can also hand design rooms and areas and then combine them randomly to make levels (Rogue Legacy does this).
And the most sophisticated systems randomly generated a whole host of variables which are then used to determine maps, like Dwarf Fortress.

As far as complicated procedural generation goes I'd say Diablo 2 is one of the best examples, the various areas are always interesting and never feel repetitive. Followed closely by random map scripts for Age of Empires and other RTSs.

Funnily, I would actually call Diablo 2's procedualy generated levels very bland. They are visually varied, if you play the game on easy and once you finish the game you never play it again. However, once you start grinding a boss you end up noticing how bland it starts feeling.

Oh, that's it! Thank you

Swarm was fun, I played it a lot.

That one? Great game! I got the morning star once! :-D

Haven't seen TinyE today so I'll go ahead with the comment.

I hope that wasn't painful for your significant other. :)

I know for a fact that I've never played Galactic Swarm, even the name doesn't sounds familiar, and yet I think I have seen it before. And it couldn't have been in a gaming magazine, because I remember the gameplay motion. Strange that I can't remember exactly where I've seen it. Maybe at a gaming expo... this is going to bug me.