Heya, wltr3565 here. It’s been a while since the last time I get to write any devlog, in particular after I quit my previous studio. This devlog won’t detail that process at all; best keep it confidential. This devlog is about our upcoming bullet hell shmup: Hell Blasters.
This will be a weird one because the nature of how Hell Blasters was announced. The game was announced when it was as complete as possible near release. So these devlogs are more like footnotes than progress updates, if anything.
Why Hell Blasters?
As new studios do of course they’ll need a debut title. I want to make something that is meaty enough to be consumed but not too strenuous to make. Yes, I’m burned out from 4-year long development cycles out of indecisiveness and crippling perfectionism. Plus, it had been my dream to publish my own shmup. One was in development in the previous studio, but things happened and here we are. Yes, the previous one is cancelled, unannounced. That is a story for another day.
So, why specifically Hell Blasters, a pixel art bullet hell shooter that lets you blast the bullet hell away? For the pixel art part, let’s say it’s within my skills to make it as good as possible within a considerable amount of time. The content is large, in particular the story mode. For this title my main target audience is on the broader side of things, the ones within the average skill of gaming. Shmup is a terrifying genre for most people due to its notorious reputation for difficulty, although there had been shmups that cater to the easier side of things, namely Compile shmups. There had also been complaints of lack of story, so this title also serves to also experiment with one thing: Give a meaty story mode with long cutscenes for average gamers to read.
This also ties in to the major mechanic of the game: the bullet-clearing special shot. I designed the shot to be easily rechargeable and easily used. In the older games mainly again, Compile, bullet-clearing shots are not hard to access like defense bits or just most of the weapons in Aleste 1. This hopefully attracts new players to more shmups and especially, Hell Blasters itself.
That’s all for now. Expect more devlogs soon toward the game’s release!
More info: