BH2: Research

Hay guys, today I’m going back to my favorite bullet-hell shooters and looking at what made them fun. I’d like to hear what your favorite shooters are and why.

Here’s some of my personal highlights, which I hope to learn from:

Dodonpachi: Explosions and massive enemies everywhere. Extremely energetic art and music style.
Ikaruga: Amazing level design and scoring system that takes advantage of the game mechanics.
Touhou: Pretty bullet patterns from the bosses, and good range of difficulty levels.
Bangai-O HD: Rewards you for flying into very dangerous situations. Let’s YOU spam the bullets too.
Geometry Wars Evolved²: So colorful and chaotic that it takes skill just to see what’s going on.
Jamestown: Supports widescreen and 4 players, unlike most vertical shmups that are ported from the arcade.

In my opinion, Bullet Heaven 1’s best features were:
• Pretty, glowing bullet patterns.
• Quite casual and easy to get into for noobs to the genre.
• Cute art style that’s tied into the EBF games.

Am I right?
Because that’s probably what I’m going to concentrate on for the sequel.

7 thoughts on “BH2: Research

  1. Arcterran

    Well I guess out of that list I’ve only played Geometry wars and I enjoyed it back when my friend had it from the early days of xbox live (The black holes….the feeling of punching space and time with every shot…oh yes!), but I recall one on the Wii that was a lot of fun. I remember an AI helper that leveled up as you played and had different attack modes (sniper that shot a laser (my favorite), a kamikaze drone, a shield drone that activley took shots, among a couple others)

    If that helps at all (My shumps were more in the realm of stuff like this: http://www.gog.com/game/raptor_call_of_the_shadows_2010_edition ) 😐

    Reply
    1. Arcterran

      as for bullet heaven…I enjoyed it! Music certainly helped, don’t know enough about bullet hells to compare it but it’s certainly easier than geometry wars XD

      Reply
  2. Aschantna

    just don’t make it too easy! i never was able to beat the last bonus boss in the last game, and that was the right thing i was not good enough, but it kept me trying again and it was FUN.

    well i would love to see good music, nice character design and bosses with bullet patterns and lots of different bullets (though i will be despairing i will love it XD)! well given that “

    Reply
  3. ShadowSun

    I would say that Teletrooper is my favorite Bullet Hell game (Barring BH) but that is because of the unique control scheme, something that would be too much effort to implement here (as well as making BH2 nothing like it’s predecessor). But one thing I think you could add would be more varied missions – stuff like the two paths in the desert level, or maybe a boss with a hard to hit weakpoint. But apart from that, keep it as awesome as before!
    :hurray:

    Reply
  4. frog

    I’m hoping for the music to be good, and some really cool boss designs would make this even better.
    I don’t want it to be too cartoony but a little would be alright.
    Don’t strain yourself on the “Action-Packing”.
    An apple a day keeps doctors away if the apple is tossed hard enough.
    Maybe you could add ninja-cats or ninja-robots, but be careful ninjavitis is the #1 leading cause of all tooth decay.
    Good luck and try to be inventive/original on the boss designing.

    p.s. I haven’t played much bullet hell shooters but I do know what I would want to see/hear, and I
    hope you like my humor in between suggestions (if not I’ll try better jokes.)

    Reply

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