Remember how difficult Edmund McMillen's The Binding of Isaac was? No way to know what you'll encounter next, hordes of enemies charging at you, and nothing to defend yourself but your salty tears. Well, now you can experience a horror-based roguelike which gives you no weapons at all! Such is the premise of No more Bullets, currently playable in beta and Orangepixel's entry for the recent Procedural Death Jam. Using the [arrow] keys to move, your objective is to find your way to the glowing white beacon without dying at the hands of a proverbial army of monsters.
You won't find any powerups, hidden switches, or boss battles here. This game is as simple as they come. It focuses not on gimmick, but on getting the most out of its game mechanics, and there is something very admirable about that. With the ability to move quickly and not much else, you'll quickly find ways of baiting the monsters—who incessantly follow you like they're under a love spell, even if it means getting themselves stuck on corners—into going where you need them to be. Saying much else would take away from your own experience playing the game, but I will leave you with this. There are ways to recover your health. With more developments to come, this beta has a lot going for it already. It's too bad that the sound doesn't seem to be in operation yet, but it's impressive that Orangepixel managed to create such an eerie atmosphere even without it. Maybe in the next update, we'll learn more about those freaky disappearing heads...
Hi everyone, I'm Joel, a new writer here on JiG. :)
My best score was 18 days, after which I got careless and found myself trapped in a tiny room with an army on my tail. I'm curious to see how far others got!
14 days I think.
I was too careless and ran right into that flamethrower...
..Meh. It's kinda boring, and fails to really even be a roguelike or a survival horror. The things that make a good survival horror include being able to fight, but not having enough resources to kill everything in your path and needing to manage them well. Likewise, what makes a good roguelike is a challenge that requires the player to think strategically and play for long-term survival..neither of which are possible in this game. There's only one resource, life, and only one way to manage it--get more. The other thing that makes a roguelike fun, having a large variety of different things to randomly discover, is completely missing from this game. Play 2 days in, and you've seen everything the game has to offer.
Kainfury: That's a respectable score! The Flamethrowers are tricky and require a certain timing.
Xindaris: I agree that this game really isn't survival horror material, but I described it as "horror-based" because it has aesthetic elements drawn from horror. Also, the beta may not have a lot of complex elements, but the simplicity is striking and purposeful in its own way. :)
There's a fair idea here but the 'simplicity' doesn't really end up translating into 'fun' for me. Blunder around a dark maze with ooh spoooky blood and bones and torches and women who blind you and vanish until you find the exit, try not to walk into too many of the monsters/traps/inconveniently placed rakes around the dungeon before you find the sole means of refilling your life so you can move on to the next maze. Relying entirely on the environment doesn't work when the environment has so few things to interact with; while it's certainly aesthetically appealing to get rid of all the graphical clutter items and abilities can make and have a tight focus, that won't by itself actually make up for the loss of what makes items/abilities valuable in the first place - giving the players choices on how to deal with the challenges they're facing. This game lacks both - the monsters are all exactly the same, the environmental features you can interact with can be counted on one hand, and the dungeon layout is literally just you going from one room to another with hardly even the branching paths maze aspect going for it. It should have more things to interact with, more enemies with different abilities, and give you some reason to want to go somewhere that isn't the exit, but it doesn't and that makes it very dull.
I have to agree with you, bdr198524.
I found the game extremely dull and stopped after around 7 days or so.
It all seemed to samey to me.
I personally didn't find the game very atmospheric or creepy, maybe just because I'm a horror nut, but having 'fear' drawn on the ground in red writing isn't exactly very creative.
I like the concept of 'no defense', but I think they just didn't develop it enough. I hope in the full version they add more content, because at the moment, it is really quite repetitive.
2/5, and the 2 is for the graphics.
'to' = too.
Sorry about that typo.
I would argue that the game doesn't really achieve "creepy," but it is atmospheric.
Thanks for your comments! Hopefully the developer will see some of this feedback and incorporate some new ideas into the final version of the game.
Besides most points that have been explained (and that I also agree), I believe that the main drawback to this game is the pathfinding AI the creatures use.
Sure, there is only a single harmful monster in the game (yet), but in order to take advantage of them, you need to almost be in a straight line of view, otherwise, they think they can pass through walls and as mindless zombies they drive themselves into it over and over again. With even a little experience, it becomes extremely easy to reap and take advantage of the monster's positions. Opening the corridors could ease this effect.
A nice thing that could eventually be done would be to give some sort of random teleportation ability to the monsters, it could in this mechanics spice up the game a little. or become a big frustration.
This being said, I am writing this after the 23rd day passed, still having the whole 100% HP.
Hi guys,
I'm the developer on this game. Hope you enjoyed it, it was actually a quick thing I did in less than a week, so for those saying it's lacking things: I agree :)
I just wanted to try something different from what I normally do, and I'm very happy with what came out of it. I might someday turn this into an actual game, for now it's just a playable game comparable to a game-jam entry and it's not balanced, lacking gameplay elements but just generally a nice time waster
Thanks for the experience though, Orangepascal. We'll be looking forward to it if and when you do update the game. :)
Update