Welcome To BulletHeck
Welcome To BulletHeck is a small Rougelike game focused on randomized items and conserving energy. Energy is consumed by both shooting (x) and sprinting (z) and running out will cause the player to slow down for a short time. New guns and items can be discovered as you progress as well as stat upgrades that can be bought from shops. The only objective is to reach floor 10 and fight the boss.
Weapons
Weapons can be found in chests scattered around the map. Each gun has perks and disadvantages so there isn't really a best option. Each run you could be given different guns so try and experiment!
Trinkets
Trinkets act like charms from Hollow knight or accessories from Terraria. Each has its own ability that help boost the player in some way, whether that be increasing the players damage, movement speed, or other unique effects such as leaving a trail of fire when you sprint. However you can only have a limited number of them active at a time. You can increase the amount by buying the upgrade at the shop.
Thanks For Playing!
This game took a lot of work and it was a lot of fun to work on. There is definitely more that could be done with this but I tried to keep the game relatively small while still being fun to play. This may be the last game I make on Pico8 for awhile as I am looking forward to learning different programing languages but in the meantime I hope you enjoy playing Welcome To BulletHeck and the other games I have made!
1.2 Changelog
1.1 Changelog
This is cool! I only made it to floor 6 on the first run, but I'm definitely going back in.
My only gripe was that the shop was so expensive. I never collected enough coins to buy anything even though I made it more than halfway! I also only encountered one treasure chest, though I guess that's just the way the randomizer rolls sometimes.
This was quite fun, but after one run where I died to the boss I'm not sure if I feel like going through all the levels again.
Games of this type often make it easy to try out the different weapons, while making it a challenge to learn to use them effectively. Here, the weapons show up rarely and obviously on the first run we don't know how one we've never heard of before compares to what we're currently holding. Would it take a lot of tokens to make it so your existing weapon gets dropped to you can switch back to it, but whatever you have in hand when you leave the level is what you then have?
On my run I took the first one I was offered, "Scattershot," and it seemed effective enough that I ignored two others that I was offered. I took every trinket I could; only one shop showed up after I got the "Greed Bag" but I was able to buy every upgrade from that shop.
The main damage I took was from the fire enemies that dash and the bomb enemies; at least one of those exploded after hitting my fire trail, about the time the fire trail had an effect. If I took damage it was immediately after entering a room with 4 enemies; as soon as I destroyed at least one of them I usually had room to keep clear of the others.
You may feel like this took long enough, and you want to move on to other projects. But if you feel like adjusting the balance, here's what I'd like to see:
- Dungeons with less rooms.
- Individual rooms get harder to compensate.
- Shooting enemies be more of a problem. Maybe increase their rate of fire with dungeon level?
- Also make enemies more dangerous with time spent in their room, so taking damage moments after entering the room is less common, but hiding behind walls for too long makes them meaner: sprint enemies get faster, shooting enemies fire more shots. Do you have the tokens to have any enemies leave hazards behind as they walk around, similar to the tombstone left behind by one of the enemy types?
- Recover some health when moving to a new level.
But thank you for making this game, my time spent playing it was still fun.
Some tips for other players:
Here's my status on the later levels:
I had fun with this cart, but I echo a lot of the feedback that @Cowirrie and @2bitchuck raised. The shop is too expensive and playing through to the end is slightly on the long side.
I hope you do iron-out the issues, because this has the potential to be really good. Thanks for posting
Update:
Hurray I won! I would have quite liked a "stat sheet" at the end of my victory (or death). Such as time taken, enemies killed, total gold.
Back to the weapons: I have played this 4 times and have only ever encountered one other weapon: "the sniper" which seems a bit overkill , but was fun . I've never encountered more than 2 pick-ups in a run, so having an "expansion" slot seemed pointless.
Thank you all for the feedback! I have implemented a patch that tries to fix a lot of the issues you've mentioned with the limited token space I still had. Hope this makes the game more enjoyable!
@JustaGameDev - Some reallty good fixes in there. Now I'm seeing weapons that I haven't encountered before and the enemy bullets passing through walls makes for much more of a challenge.
I'm still not a fan of the HUD though. Have you tried putting the health at top-left? Also when you die it is a bit sudden. If you don't have the tokens for a death animation, at least just ending on the room with a "you died" message would be preferable. Once when I was playing, I was frantically bashing the keys, when it appeared to suddenly start a new gane. I'd died and restarted without realising what had happened.
The balance patch really smoothed things out and made for a more fun experience. I got to see more guns this time around, and the increased coins made buying from the shop more interesting than only having enough for one option like before.
The flamethrower gun went from underpowered to feeling slightly overpowered with the buff, but it's still more balanced than before; before the patch, the starter gun was actually one of the better guns, in my opinion, since it offered decent damage for little stamina. Then I got the Arbiter at the very last room before the boss, so while I didn't get to see how it did against regular enemies, I can certainly say it felt powerful against the boss! The guns have mostly been fun and interesting to experiment with.
The only thing is that I still have no idea what any of the trinkets do except the dash boots; their effects don't seem to have much-- if any-- effect on my run, so they're easy to ignore.
It's a good mix of difficulty in that the player is sometimes forced to think about the tactical situation of entering a room and balancing their stamina to reposition in the middle of a cramped combat. The length after the patch feels just right, too. Overall, it's very impressive for a Pico-8 roguelike!
These are some great changes. Having the shots fly through walls is smart, making sure we can't just sit behind walls forever. When I took damage this time, it felt like I'd got careless, not that I'd been unfairly unlucky.
Being able to return to one previous weapon at the shop is good too. It means we get a serious chance to try out the new weapon, and having it cost a small amount of money is good for making us really think if the old weapon is better, or just more familiar.
I picked up the Arbiter fairly early, and only changed weapons when offered... another Arbiter. Here's where I was at the end of level 9.
And this time...
Trinkets I've seen:
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