Sometimes all you can do is run to survive
For a project, our students had to make a Bullet Hell game in Unity. Since they are first years students and because we want them to better understand coding principles like SOLID, design patterns, Composition over Inheritance and other, they were also unable to use the Unity Scene View and instead had to do everything in code. Another requirement was that they could only work with primimtive shapes. To better understand the potential problems they might run into, and to brush up on my Unity and coding skills, I decided to create a Bullet Hell myself, with a twist: The player cannot shoot themselves. So instead, they have to rely on dodging and letting enemies collide with each other, so that they destroy themselves.
The game can be played here:
The core engagement of this game is dodging, so everything the player does has to reinforce that behavior. I have attempted to creat enemies that make it more interesting to divert to destroy others. Furthermore, since they are only make out of primitive shapes, they must be easy distinguishable by color and shape alone. There are different types of enemies, which have distinctive behaviors.
The first enemy I created is the Tail Gator, which follows the player and shoots at the position that they are at that moment. They are rather easy to dodge, but since they are very abundant, they can threaten the player by shear numbers. They are also the enemies that kill other enemies most easily.
After that, I wanted the player to feel a bit more rushed, so that it’s not just about running away, but they have to think about where they are running as well and how to use their environment in their favor, so I created an enemy that shoots homing missiles, which are drawn to the player when they get within range.
After that, I mostly wanted to focus on enemies that increase the pace of engagement, pressuring the player to respond swiftly. However, they also compel the player to strategize about where they move toward, rather than just quickly responding, ensuring a balance of speed and tactical thinking.
The Hive Raptor follows the player and when they get within a certain range, their movement interpolates to a much faster speed. After some time, they destroy themselves. Because they move in flocks, they are much more difficult to dodge. Trying to outrun them is impossible, so the player has to learn to dodge them.
The Blink Wolf looks a lot like the hive raptor, except that they teleport toward the player after some time. After that their movement speed increases quite dramatically for a short period of time. They force the player to think about their positioning; players must consider not just where the Blink Wolf is now, but also where it might be in the next moment.
After adding some enemies that challenge the player’s tactical positioning, I decided that I wanted to add some different enemy types that constrict the player’s freedom of movement across the map, further increasing the level of difficulty.
The Web Weaver roams around the map and places mines. This need for heightened awareness and strategic planning engages players more intensely in the game. They can also use the mines to lure enemies into, giving the game an extra layer of strategy.
The Mirrage Manta also roams the map and creates two clones every x seconds. It becomes pertinant to figure out which of these is the original Manta and which ones are clones, for the more clones there are, the more difficult it becomes to navigate the map.
After these enemies, I shifted my focus on creating enemies that challenge the player in different ways.
The thought process behind the Swarm Sparrow was to challenge the player’s ability to deal with multiple threats simultaneously. The Sparrow itself is not particularly daunting; however, it produces a swarm of smaller entities that quickly congest the gameplay area. This forces the player to strategize and manage the spread of the swarm efficiently.
The Blast Badger brings a compelling twist, acting as a dynamic obstacle that displaces both player and enemies alike. Its presence necessitates careful tracking as it could potentially launch an enemy towards the player or vice versa, adding an element of strategy and unpredictability to the game.
Finally, I introduced two powerups – the Blast and Rush – obtained by defeating Hive Raptors and Blast Badgers. These strategic enhancements aid skillful players in navigating the game space, offering them a higher chance of progression. Mastering the tactical use of these powerups can reward dedicated players with a superior performance and game progression.
Future endeavors
There are a few things that I would add, had I some more time on this project. Firstly, I would create a new powerup; the Blink Powerup. This would allow the player to blink short distances from the place they are at the moment they activate it to the place where they picked up the powerup. This introduces a new level of skill, because it can be used to lure enemies and suddenly blink out, increasing the heuristic skill tree.
Secondly, I would love to add some more enemies that are very unlike the ones that exist right now, that really use the space of the board and further push the player toward the design pillar I set this project out, which is tactical decision making, which right now has been lost a little bit; the game has become more about reaction time. This isn’t in itself a bad thing, but it doesn’t fully allign with this design pillar.
Examples of such enemies are
- Circuit Cheetah, which follows a set path in groups. The player would have to understand how they move in order to not only avoid collisions with these enemies, but also take advantage of their predictable patterns to cause enemies to collide with them.
- Maze Master moves around and occasionally creates walls that the player cannot pass but other enemies can. This helps make sure the player must think tactically about how they navigate the world.
Thirdly, the game could use a cool boss. One that appears after a minute or so of gameplay, and that fully pushes the player to their boundaries. This might be a Circular boss that has different behaviours based on how many hits they have taken. Hits can only be administered on very specific locations on this boss, which means that the player has to carefully navigate the other enemies to make sure they collide with these locations.
Examples of boss attacks could be
- Nail gun Darts shoot out in every direction.
- Laser rays The boss divides the level in four slowly moving quadrants and the player now has to both watch where they are going as well as use the small space where they can move to dodge other enemies.
- Homing missles Like the Seeker Hawk, the boss would shoot multiple homing missles at the player in short succession.
- Swarm attack The boss would create small bursts of the Swarm Sparrow (for example 4 groups of three), which makes the movement space more perilous.
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