LudumData

Bullet Hell by kamekai

[raw]
made by kamekai for LD 40 (JAM)

cover.png

Click here to play

Post-jam version

Scroll down for some great background music

Controls

Main and rotational thrusters: WADS or Arrow keys

Lateral thrusters: Q/E or Left/Right shift keys

Blaster: Spacebar/Enter

Pause: Escape

Unpause: Enter

Description

My entry for the Ludum Dare 40.

You would think you couldn't have too much bullets.

Unfortunately, in Bullet Hell, the more you have, the worse it is.

In this world, your bullets ricochet across the landscape until they kill an enemy... or you.

With each bullet on screen, your score increments faster.

How long can you last? How daring will you be?

I didn't have time to implement sound, so here is something for your ears:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22LRHqE1XAc

Post-mortem:

I ended up catching a few movies with a friend last night so I didn't have time to implement a few things, namely sound, power-ups and more enemies. If it seems worth my time, I will polish up the game next week.

This time I decided to make a game in regular old Javascript. I made use of two small libraries: Mithril as a lightweight view engine, and Matter.js as a lightweight basic physics engine. The entire package comes in at right underneath 64kb compressed, which was my goal.

Despite encountering several bugs due to edge-case quirks with these libraries, the experience of making a game in pure JS was great and I think I will continue the trend in future Ludum Dares.

Hope you enjoyed playing my little weekend doodle!

Mithril - https://mithril.js.org/

Matter.js - http://brm.io/matter-js/

HTML5 (web) https://bl.ocks.org/bad-software/raw/d6a7fc7e173f8ffbac575bf5c848140c/
HTML5 (web) https://github.com/bad-software/bullet-hell
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/bullet-hell

Ratings

Overall 842th 3.143⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Fun 738th 3.119⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 866th 2.833⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Theme 240th 3.857⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 832th 3.024⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Humor 811th 2.406⭐ 18🧑‍⚖️
Mood 993th 2.594⭐ 18🧑‍⚖️
Given 5🗳️ 8🗨️

Feedback

Billeclipse
05. Dec 2017 · 02:03 UTC
Really nice. Got that nostalgic gameplay but with modern aesthetics :P
klekky
05. Dec 2017 · 02:08 UTC
Great game! I like the simple concept and art style, and how you managed to use the theme. I kinda got annoyed at the controls, but I guess that could be considered part of the challenge. Also, you should probably put an easier way to get to this page so people can actually rate your game. Other than that, I found the game pretty fun.
🎤 kamekai
05. Dec 2017 · 02:11 UTC
I actually just updated the controls a moment ago because I realized a debug flag was still set. Turning is tighter and strafing has more thrust. See if you like it better now!

They are still a bit annoying but I didn't have too much time to polish them up. Thanks for your feedback!
klekky
05. Dec 2017 · 02:24 UTC
The tighter turning definitely makes it better.
jfraser314
06. Dec 2017 · 21:46 UTC
Hard game with some interesting ideas. I think your name is spot-on, and you definitely were on board with the theme of this jam.
schmavery
06. Dec 2017 · 21:48 UTC
Cool interpretation of the theme. I also thought it was pretty neat to be able to scale the difficulty of the game by simply resizing the window -- very creative. I found it pretty hard to get very far (I've never been much good at asteroids), but appreciated the abusive remarks the game would randomly make upon death, very entertaining haha.
Florian van Strien
06. Dec 2017 · 21:49 UTC
Well done! I liked the game idea and the way you used the theme. The (abstract) graphics are also nice. The game was fun, but I did find it really hard because of the controls (I don't play many games like this though). Cool that you've managed to keep the file size so tiny.

By the way, the YouTube video you linked says "This video is not available.", but maybe that's just in my country (the Netherlands).
Chronosv2
06. Dec 2017 · 22:08 UTC
That's a very interesting idea, and a really cool use of the theme! The lack of music and sound is a shame but time is ever our enemy in stuff like this, so I completely understand.

The weird thing I personally noticed is that Q/E sometimes made me seemingly start turning, which interfered a bit with one of my attempted strategies. Not sure if that's how it was intended to work but either way it was a fun game to try.
🎤 kamekai
06. Dec 2017 · 22:15 UTC
Thanks for the kind words everyone.

@Chronosv2 Haha yes, I found that bug too late unfortunately after realizing I wasn't just *that* bad at predicting my angular velocity before a shot. Controls are next on my list to overhaul for the update. It's very frustrating as-is. Glad you liked it!
Hayzar
09. Dec 2017 · 11:16 UTC
I like the idea and I had a lot of fun playing it, simple and elegant.

Something you could add in the future is screen shaking when you hit a wall I imagine that could make it more impactful.

(thanks for reminding me to go back to school)
rplnt
11. Dec 2017 · 23:04 UTC
This was brutal. Really hard game, but one I can see someone getting really high score in (I got just over 60k). Nice simple visuals, really smooth gameplay. The controls took a bit time to get used to, and aiming was quite impossible for me. Luckily the enemies would get shot anyway :)
🎤 kamekai
11. Dec 2017 · 23:07 UTC
My high score is just over 1mil. Every five enemies nets you 100k. It took hours of failure o_O
rplnt
11. Dec 2017 · 23:10 UTC
@kamekai Just tried the post-jam version and did much better there. The fact that I've read the description certainly helped, and maybe the controls got better overall? Anyway, good game.
🎤 kamekai
11. Dec 2017 · 23:15 UTC
Yes, there was a bug in the OG that caused inconsistent turning speeds.

I also increased angular dampening when you stop turning. It's a tradeoff between realism (Pure Newtonian physics) and pragmatism (No one would fly a spaceship that didn't have some form of abstraction between the controls and output to make things easier on the navigator)
Ango
11. Dec 2017 · 23:18 UTC
I was scared by my mouse. Solid gameplay, respected the theme, simple graphic.
LeReveur
12. Dec 2017 · 00:24 UTC
I think the real hell in this game is the momentum. I'm pretty sure I would have fun playing it if I wasn't upset about the weird controls due to (really) too much inertia. Wich is a pitty, because everything else seems to be fine, and mainly because I really like the idea of having to avoid my own bullets.
Logicon211
12. Dec 2017 · 00:36 UTC
Very good idea🧙🏿‍♂️
🎤 kamekai
12. Dec 2017 · 00:38 UTC
@lereveur To a degree, momentum is part of the [fun](http://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php?title=DF2014:Fun) and allows you to form interesting and flexible strategies. However, I have added a boost mechanism in v1.1 that can provide a quick brake or thrust in a pinch, increasing the player's strategic capabilities.
IllaBom
12. Dec 2017 · 01:23 UTC
Very nice little game you have here. Well Done!


Come check out my game if you like!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/virus-detected