Vampiric Bullet Hell by Drunk Wizard
You are a vampyr, one of the oldest ones in fact. For centuries you've roamed the Earth, never feeling fullfilled. Then it hit you, mortal life is key to purpose. You've explored many a ruin, some completely empty, others full of old guardians, in search of a cure. Finally you arrived to an old Lyrish tomb rumoured to contain what you seek. As you delve deeper, the unstable walls trap you within...
Enjoy the Vampiric Bullet Hell!
Fast paced 3D arena shooter. Balance the level of your health and slay your enemies to survive to the end. Reaching zero health results in death, reaching 100% results in something else...*

Controls
- Movement WASD/Arrow keys
- Fire Left mouse button
- Melee E
- Jump Space
- Dash Shift (costs health to use)
- Menu Escape use this to adjust volume and mouse sensitivity
Tips
Once you reach the crystal door (hit E to open), your health will start draining, be sure to damage enemies to heal yourself (shooting enemies spawns red healing orbs).
Dashing drains your health, use it to stay below 100% if you can't handle the power.
Alt+F4 to close the game conveniently at any time.
*Reaching 100% health leads to Boiling Blood - this raises your speed and damage, but also makes your health drain faster, until you reach 50% health.
| Link | https://tk07.itch.io/vampiric-bullet-hell |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/vampiric-bullet-hell |
Ratings
| Overall | 438th | 3.739⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 273th | 3.848⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1157th | 2.913⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1347th | 2.717⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 523th | 3.848⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 516th | 3.478⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 475th | 3.652⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 38🗳️ | 23🗨️ |
Our excitement unfortunately led us the path of just make the game we wanted, and putting the theme second. Our initial idea was that the player's health would drain over time and the player having to fight to heal (which we did) we also implemented a feature, where if you have too much health, you get buffed but your health drains faster, thus it was in our minds - instability.
Later on we also thought it would be nice, to have the ruins/dungeon you're in, especially the arena, fall apart or change every couple of waves, this didn't really make it into the game, and ended with falling rocks that spawn enemies, and one overall change to the arena.
We were really strained for time and truly pushed it to the limit, ending with us submitting the game literally a minute before deadline. I will confess - only the next day we found two minor issues, which were fixed post LD (I replaced the footstep sound with another one, because the original had crackling in it, also the cure that was supposed to appear wasn't visible thus leaving an empty altar) and I hope, you can forgive me for that :)
The audio is also all over the place as I never really used 3D audio in Unity to any capacity, so sorry about that :X
For any who read this, your feedback is welcome and we really hope, you had at least a short enjoyment out of our project :)
@elmismopancho you're right, in all the hustle and bustle I didn't even realize that, something for next time :)
@stupidhobbit yup, the corridors were a bit small, they weren't really the main focus and the "tutorial" part came in last, as we wanted to focus more on the main arena
@threaded-lama-digital we discussed wether we would do the in-game tutorials breaking the fourth wall and I decided not to, and was wrongly relying on the players to read the controls on the LD page, the controls should be shown in the game, but as stated above, the tutorial part came in the last couple of hours under time duress, and I made the more immersive choice, I absolutely would want to work-in a better teaching process :) and yes, the reload is too long, another thing that I realized only once you wrote it, thank you :)
The graphics are good since the style of all assets is cohesive and the lighting was also nice to me.
It is very short, but thats to be expected from gamejam games. You have made very good basis to add plenty of levels/monster types/weapons and could make a full game off it.
@player-2 thanks for your feedback :) I wanted the players to not have to squint at tiny text, but didn't double-check it and the text ended up more unreadable :D the theme was supposed to be in the health - which constantly decreases and when reaching 100% gives you a boost with the downside of draining much more health. Due to time constraints, we couldn't implement something along the lines of unstable arena, that would fall apart as the battle progressed, that said, we just wanted to try something we didn't do before this time and put the theme second. We basically used this LD to challenge our technical knowledge more than our creativity :)
Moevement, shooting, mobs, visual style and sound feels great and - what is really important for jam - complete. Okay, there is only one level but game loop is really soft and has nice flow. Of course, I want more levels and more guns! You can make even more challages based on system "shot costs hp", it really simple mechanic but it has great potential.
However, UI is close to be perfect. On my thought, icons near health bar don't match the game style. And I didn't find the exit button (but may be there is no exit?). Or I'm just blind, it's possible :D
@astramorae glad you enjoyed it! We wanted to have at least an automatic gun and a shotgun, but because we don't really have ammo types or mechanics, and it was our first FPS, we decided to stick with the pistol. And yes, we wanted to make the shooting a bit more interesting, with at least reloading costing health as the animation is made for it :) The UI was sort of stitched together in a hurry :D (quit is with alt+F4 :X)
@ivysly thanks :) yes I knew it was going to be a problem for players, but we didn't think of another way to differentiate, or at least, REALLY SHOW the player, that the red homing ones heal you :/
@sleepystudios why thank you! I am glad you enjoyed it :)