You take the role of a pilot from the world of Bruenhild, the last planet in the known galaxy that is still under the control of the Gaeans, whose other colonies have been taken over by the Red Lanpherean Empire. Each of the available ships comes equipped a special shield technology known as Schildmaid. Your ship begins in a Neutral state, and by making contact with an enemy bullet, it gains a Shield state in which absorbing further bullets will add a substantial amount to your score and power up your weapons. However, the shield depletes over time and must be replenished by destroying enemies, which also charges the EX attack meter; should the shield energy run out, you will enter Danger state, during which enemy bullets (in addition to all other enemy) attacks become lethal. Once this Danger period runs out, you return to Neutral state and the cycle begins anew.
There are four playable ships, with three available in most modes:
- S-19 Wivern, the fastest of the three ships with options that follow the ship's movement, but has the shortest shield duration and the longest Danger time. Its EX attack is a massive laser.
- Hydra G130, a balanced fighter that has average stats all across the board and options that fly in a fixed formation above and below the ship. Its EX attack is a large volley of missiles.
- B60-E Greif, a slow fighter with rotating options and a Spread Shot, as well as the longest shield duration and shortest Danger time. Its EX attack is a more powerful shield that blocks all enemy attacks and counterattacks projectiles, but which also prevents bullets from being absorbed for scoring and power-up purposes.
- Chimera CH6, available only in Chimera mode (which also locks out all other available ships. It combines the best qualities of the other three ships, with Wivern's speed and Greif's shield and Danger durations, as well as shots that lock onto enemies. Its EX attack is a combination of the other ships' EX attacks.
In most modes, the game is divided into loops of three stages each: Asteroid Field, Fleet Defense Grid, and Invasion Fleet. Upon completing these three stages, play continues to a new loop with remixed and more difficult variants of these three stages.
In addition to a training mode, there are four modes in total, with two of them having harder "EX" variants:
- Jaeger is the "easy" mode, featuring more forgiving enemy attacks and an Auto-Save system. Every time you complete a stage, a new save is created, and you can reload previous saves to try to optimize your run and minimize mistakes. Note that scores achieved by reloading saves does not disqualify them from high score rankings, so high-scoring in this game is all about trying to optimize each individual stage rather than trying to do well in one go like a traditonal Arcade Game. There are three loops in total. EX Jaeger is similar, featuring a higher starting loop and an increased Cap on the player's weapon level.
- Krieger is the "hard" mode of the game, with no continues or saves allowed and featuring more difficult stages. Like Jaeger mode, play runs for three loops. Like Jaeger, this mode features an EX Krieger variant with new enemies not seen in Krieger mode.
- Chimera is an endless mode where you only have one life, no continues, and gameplay continues until you lose that sole life (thus you can keep going into the fourth loop and beyond). For this mode exclusively, you pilot the Chimera ship.
- Sieger is a single high-difficulty stage lasting about 10 minutes.
Schildmaid MX provides examples of the following:
- Achievement System: The game features an internal achievment system, which mostly syncs with the Steam achievement version if playing via Steam. "Mostly", because some of the achievements are repeatable. Earning achievements awards AP, which can be spent to unlock new modes and new ship palettes.
- Advancing Boss of Doom: One of the bosses, The Hunter, starts off by attacking you from behind, and since your offensive options for enemies behind you are limited, you mostly spend this sequence avoiding its attacks. Eventually, it pulls ahead of you and you can more easily destroy it.
- Alliterative Name: The Final Boss of Jaeger and Sieger modes and the third boss of Krieger and Chimera modes is called Exuberant Extermination.
- Anti-Armor: Green "corrupted" bullets and the explosions of green scout enemies will immediately end your shield if one is active, immediately putting you in Danger state. If you don't already have a shield, you will enter Shield state, but only for about a second and without the ability to absorb bullets for points before going into Danger.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- When you enter Danger state, you actually have a small grace period during which bullets will not kill you (but you will not score points off of them either, as Shield state has ended). Similarly, you actually have a small period at the end of the Danger phase where bullets are still red but during which you can absorb bullets and re-enter Shield state at that point.
- The game has many options to change or disable various graphical effects (such as lighting and smoke effects and even background layers) or turn on visual aids like sprite outlines or a more dyslexia-friendly font, whether to ease the load on your PC or because of visibility issues since some of the visual effects can get quite distracting for some players.
- Armor-Piercing Attack: Missiles will instantly kill you regardless of whether you have a shield up or not.
- Asteroid Thicket: The first stage of each loop is set in an asteroid field. There's a few asteroids in lower loops, and they become larger and more numerous in higher loops, sometimes to the point where you fly through gigantic hollow asteroids.
- Battleship Raid:
- The third stage of each loop, Invasion Fleet, has you flying in between large battleships, occasionally picking off their turrets.
- The first score-based boss in Jaeger, Krieger, and Chimera modes, the Invasion Fleet Command Ship, has you flying into the eponymous ship to destroy its core.
- Classical Chimera: The Chimera fighter uses this as its underlying motif; it doesn't look like one, but it does combine the best elements of the other three fighters (Wivern's speed, Greif's Shield and Danger durations, all three ships' EX attacks), which are themselves named after other mythical creatures.
- Counter-Attack:
- When activating a shield, it will zap the enemy that fired the shield-triggering bullet for some damage. If the enemy has already been destroyed, you will attack the closest enemy instead. If no enemies are present, no counterattack is fired.
- Greif's EX Shield counterattacks all enemy bullets and missiles in the same fashion.
- Deflector Shields: The player ships' signature characteristic is a shield that is activated by an touching enemy bullet (rather than the more traditional methods of getting an item or pressing a button like in other video games). Once shielded, touching more bullets will add substantial points to your score (further boosted by a Score Multiplier that builds up as you stay shielded) and contribute EXP to your weapon level (unless it is at maximum already). However, shields run on finite energy that must be recharged by destroying enemies, and if the energy gauge runs out, it "overheats" and you enter Danger state until it is ready for use again. Shields will also protect against enemy beams, but will drain energy faster as a result, green "corrupted" attacks will end an existing shield in progress or start a 1-second corrupted shield if you are in Neutral, and missiles and collisions with enemies or stage hazards will kill you with or without a shield up.
- Do a Barrel Roll: Pressing the roll button causes your ship to do an aileron roll that briefly throws off the homing capabilities of locked-on enemy missiles and directional enemy beams. It's also required to enter the portal that takes you to the next stage.
- Endless Game: Chimera mode keeps going until the player dies. As such, a skilled enough player can play for more than three loops, unlike in Jaeger and Krieger mode.
- Gold-Colored Superiority: Once your ship's power level reaches maximum, its shield will change from blue to golden, and enemy bullets and point gain indicators for absorbing them will turn golden as well.
- Hard Mode Perks: EX Jaeger and EX Krieger are more difficult, but feature higher level caps for your ship's main weapon.
- The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: One of the bosses, The Hunter, starts off by ambushing you from behind and forcing you to defend yourself as it attacks you as very few of your attacks can reach behind you, but eventually you get behind it and are more in position to destroy it. Fittingly, the achievement for destroying it is called "The Hunter hunted".
- Last Ditch Move:
- Red scout enemies and four-way beam enemies release bullets upon destruction. Unless you are in Danger state, this is actually a good thing, since absorbing bullets is vital to your score.
- Corrupted enemies release green corrupted bullets when destroyed. With these bullets, you want to avoid them, as they will short out your shield, or give you a one-second corrupted shield that then sends you into Danger if you are in Neutral.
- In later loops, green scout enemies will release green circles of corrupted energy, with the same anti-shield effect of corrupted bullets.
- Limit Break: Destroying enemies fills up the EX gauge; once the gauge is filled, your ship can deploy a powerful attack that does massive damage and/or erases enemy attacks. This is great for offensive purposes (to destroy extra-durable enemies before your shield energy runs out) and defensive purposes (to protect yourself); however, bullets erased by EX attacks do not count as absorbed, so it's up to the player to strategically deploy EX attacks to balance survivability, shield retention, and scoring. Ship-specific examples:
- Wivern fires a massive laser.
- Hydra fires a wave of high-speed, high-powered missiles.
- Greif deploys an EX Shield that erases enemy bullets and missiles and counterattacks enemies that shoot them, and blocks enemy beams but without the extra energy consumption. However, bullets countered with the EX Shield do not count as absorbed. If you are already in Shield state, the EX Shield takes priority over your existing shield.
- Chimera deploys the EX attacks of Wivern, Hydra, and Greif all at once.
- Macross Missile Massacre: Hydra's EX attack launches a flurry of missiles that seek out enemies and destroy any enemy attacks that get in the way.
- Not-Actually-Cosmetic Award: The Achievement System. In addition to proving that you've completed certain feats, they also award AP, which is needed to unlock new modes (and ship palettes, but that's just a straight Cosmetic Award).
- Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: The four player ships are all named after mythical creatures: Wivern (Wyvern), Hydra, Greif (Gryphon), and Chimera. In fact, the creatures that inspire the first three ships' names are shown prominently on the title screen.
- Retraux: The game has the look and sound of a European shmup from the 1990s. Additionally, there are filters to simulate the pixels and roundness of CRT screens.
- Shout-Out: The person responsible for discovering and providing the energy source for Bruenhildian shield technology is a buccaneer named Naomi Lindbergh, in reference to the Sega NAOMI and Sega Lindbergh arcade hardware platforms.
- Sickly Green Glow: "Corrupted" attacks glow green, to warn you that touching them will interfere with your ship's shield, either starting a very short (about one second) shield you can't earn absorb points off of, or cutting your shield short if you have one already.
- Wave-Motion Gun:
- Wivern's EX attack fires a massive laser that erases enemy attacks and causes major damage to enemies.
- Many enemies fire off beam attacks, most notably the humanoid mechas. They are instant-kill in Neutral and Danger, but while in Shield, they will simply make your shield meter deplete faster.
