Here you can find my posts about Nintendo, Pokémon, indie games, critters, and other lovely things. I'm a Pokemon furry: I roleplay (non-anthro) Pokemon, and have a Pokesona instead of a fursona. I also like cute critters of other kinds. I got quite good at writing fiction from 15 years of roleplay experience. I'm male, bi, Canadian, leftist, and in an open polyamorous relationship. I'm methyphobic so please don't interact with me if you're drunk/high, and avoid talking about the topic to me. I don't like the Pokemon main games, but I do like Pokemon Ranger GS and Pokemon Cafe Mix and Pokemon Snap. By and large though, I just love Pokemon as a *world,* as a fictional group of creatures. I Twitch-stream indie adventure games and friendly Nintendo games with my Ampharos avatar.
After a good 7 to 8 business weeks, the mail is here! This little snail mail man worked hard to bring you your letters
I need to make more snails, this guy was so much fun
(6) the Titan, and the recycling of bullet hell form
hi!!! this is the final part of my series about Deltarune and bullet hell design!!! this section's about the Titan fight, and how it recycles typical bullet hell elements, adapting their gameplay to fit Deltarune. i recommend reading the other parts first but u don't have to
what are typical bullet hells like?
Jevil, the Knight, and how Deltarune's bullet hell works
Spamton NEO, and quotations of tradition
Sans, and the weaponisation of game design
Chapter 4's Light World scene
the Titan, and the recycling of bullet hell form
in typical bullet hell shmups, you're pushed down by curtains of bullets projected from swarms of enemies. you reply with your own firepower, pushing your way upwards.
a lot of bullet hells have a pretty fragmented approach to story. cutscenes and dialogue are distractions so they're minimised. because bullet hells have such a niche audience, translations are done on shoestring budgets, so the text we do get is near unintelligible.
but because these games are such passion projects, because so much effort goes into them, sometimes they end up with hugely detailed and intricate stories anyway. look at Touhou, and Ikaruga, and Hellsinker!!
and a common thread between a lot of bullet hells is that the enemies, so often just abstract shapes and amalgamations of metal forms, that these enemies are all conscious and intelligent and alive. like, in a typical shmup, you've probably surpassed a No Mercy route by orders of magnitudes.
aren't the Titan Spawn a lot like this?
as I've covered in the other parts, Deltarune diverges pretty significantly from typical bullet hells. for example. because the soul normally can't attack, you don't really have to work to gain territory, to push upwards, to dismantle swarms of enemies.
but, throughout Chapter 4, Deltarune slowly remixes its gameplay into something new. in the Titan and Titan Spawn fights, a halo of light surrounds the soul. as you graze around their swarm, the Spawn are purified into nothingness: you can fight back.
There's a
light inside your soul
that's still shining in the cold
with the truth.
The promise in our hearts.
Toby like, recycles bullet hell gameplay. you're not a lone fighter, tearing their way upwards: the soul's a tiny candle smothered by an ocean of darkness, about to be snuffed out, bleaching the shadows around it, fighting to stay afloat.
Titan Spawn are analogues to swarms of shmup enemies. they skitter/drift towards the soul, cautiously trying to envelope it. their movements are erratic, natural. they flow towards you with a shared heartbeat, pulsing forwards in sync. centipedes orbit around the soul, lunge towards it, loop back towards you. all of the forms get dissolved by the Titan's own attacks quicker then they get dissolved by the soul. it's less like a curtain of bullets, and more like a fog of them.
in typical shmups, the fastest way of killing an enemy is to move directly under it and shoot it, right? the Titan's equivalent of this is to find holes within the swarm, to let yourself by enveloped it, and then thinning out the fog.
when the Titan uses its hands to attack us, we dismantle them, segment by segment. there's this strategic element here, because getting closer to segmented Spawn and segmented attacks might risk more damage, but it also rewards you the most in turn.
in some shmups you're portrayed as the sole hope for humanity. the last person alive, or the only person capable of fighting back, or something like that. but, at the same time, life will go on even if you don't succeed, because the enemies are still alive, just in an unrecognisable way.
often, extremely intricate bullet patterns are attempts to portray something unrepresentable, something completely alien, a different form of humanity. i think Toby, in the Titan fight portrays darkness as some kind of, unrepresentable and otherworldly form of life.
where Deltarune so often focuses on fighting individuals, on how they're expressed through their bullets, in Chapter 4 Toby rediscovers one of the core tenets of bullet hell design; of being alone against overwhelming odds and forces, of fighting against countless numbers.
i really really love the Titan's gameplay. i really hope it comes back in future chapters, and gets developed further. it has a lot of potential!
and anyways!!!! this is the final part of this series of posts!! thank you for reading them, i really enjoyed writing them, let me know if you appreciate this format :) thank you
oh, and play bullet hells! a lot of their developers really struggle because the audience is so niche. but i love them a lot, and i think UTDR fans could love them too.
p.s. I've written a little about the titan before here
if in the future i have additional thoughts i might come back for a bonus part. but who knows .....
(2) Jevil, the Knight, and how Deltarune's bullet hell works
hi! this is the second part in a series of posts where i analyse how Deltarune works as a bullet hell. in this post, i'm going to explore how its bullet hell gameplay is designed, using Jevil and the Roaring Knight as case studies. you should probably read the first part first.
what are typical bullet hells like?
Jevil, the Knight, and how Deltarune's bullet hell works
Spamton NEO, and quotations of tradition
Sans, and the weaponisation of game design
Chapter 4's Light World scene
the Titan, and the recycling of bullet hell form
Deltarune is a turn-based RPG. it's a kind of stacatto edition of bullet hells. you take your turn, and then there's a short bullet hell section.
like, where traditional bullet hells have a continuous downpour of attacks, where you maneuver and attack to reach a place of safety, in Deltarune you're instead required to wait out the enemies turn, and then you can take as long a break as you need.
during their attacks, the enemy controls the board. like, in traditional shmups enemies move through the board, attacking from fixed positions. but in Deltarune, darkners use magic to encircle you, moving from any direction.
so while in traditional bullet hells, gameplay is pivoted around space, in UTDR gameplay is pivoted around expression. every attack is a microgame, rich with personality.
i think because UTDR emphasises the individuality of patterns to such an extent, the gameplay experiences differs traditionally from more traditional shmups. bullets move erratically, accelerating, curving, slowing down. you have to treat each pattern as a unique challenge, having to learn how These Particular Bullets move to cope.
Jevil's attacks come in two species, and i think they showcase really clearly what makes Deltarune so unique.
the first are his heart/clubs/spade/diamonds attacks; these are completely chaotic. UTDR bosses normally have a sense of order and geometricness in their patterns that's quite similar to traditional stage bosses.
meanwhile, Jevil's attacks are more reminiscent of in-between enemy waves. you get attacked from every direction, chaotically, without any pattern of movement available that lets you navigate the pattern more easily.
the second species are his scythes, his carousel, his ring of spades. these bullets move in curves and spirals, forcing you to engage with Jevil on his terms. if you move to dodge one bullet, you're now in the path of his next attack.
i think with Jevil we can see how UTDR deviates from the bullet hell formula, but to its advantage, allowing for new possibilities within the game design.
the Knight's fight is really beautiful. like, in traditional bullet hells you're fighting to create moments of peace within the bullet patterns. but while fighting the Knight, the patterns themselves reach a kind of transcendental calm.
you have to thread through the eye of a needle again and again, drifting through waves of bullets, reflexively jolting away from their slashes. their attacks become more intense as the fight progresses. but they've always got the same rhythm, the same signposting.
so you learn to deal with the patterns by instinct, and the Knight gets more frustrated, more erratic, but you can always keep up the dance, because the Knight is always expressed the same way.
we can grind through the Knight's attacks, reach full TP again every turn, turning the battle inside out, timing Rude Buster perfectly, finding our own footing.
so you can weave through every pattern, they attack you and you dodge their bullets. unlike traditional bullet hell bosses, the Knight doesn't really overwhelm you- there's one path through every attack, and they're focused on you, so you can move out of the way. and once you develop the right sense of instinct, you can kind of fold the battle inside out.
so, with the Knight, the way that Deltarune removes traditional bullet hell mechanics also allows it to gain a lot of focus. you don't need to shoot the knight in their attacks, don't need to find moments to breathe. you learn their patterns and break through to the end.
in conclusion!! Deltarune focuses on individuality within its bullet patterns, pivoting the combat around brief attacks. through this, Toby centralises the bullet hell form onto the enemy, teaching the player to engage with everyone individually in a new, unique way.
but in some moments, Deltarune incorporates aspects of traditional bullet hell design, which is what I'm going to talk about next.
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