House of Bullets Patreon Beta Starts NOW! Stage 1 Release 1

*Update - Just Released a New build that darkens the background (version 1.1)*

So here's a quick run down of how all this works!

I am developing this shmup with the hope of completing it within a year (and am sincerely going to work towards keeping up with development). 

I am going to release individual stage betas for Patrons to play test and try out!

I am really happy to hear everyone's feedback and to watch gameplay footage of patrons trying the game out, this is like playtesting as development happens. However, even though I am going to keep a careful log of all feedback that I receive, I am not going to make a ton of balance changes right away. Instead, what I am going to do is absorb everyone's feedback and try to use that to guide the development while still trying to keep of the vision of the game true. During this beta process I want to try to no be too reactive, but not closed minded to suggestion either, but keep in mind that the full experience of the game cannot be felt until all the stages are completed, this is when most of the heavy revamping and balancing is going to take place. 

As a thank you and cool perk to the patrons, I am going to include the names of all patrons who support the game during 4 months of development in the credits! The homies and illuminati will have their own sections in the credits :-) 

So a basic rundown of what House of Bullets is to those who don't know the design philosophy. HOB is all about having a shmup that basically never stops, there is pretty much no downtime, extremely small transitions between stages, and a full enemy onslaught at all times. There are also MASSIVE WAVES of enemies. I am 100% confident that by the time this game is finished, it will easily have the highest enemy count in shmup history.

 Even stage 1 HOB is not for the faint of heart and is actually pretty dang difficult. However, I am going to be working really hard to give players really cool training tools (such as the checkpoint wheel) that make practicing the stages less frustrating. Later on I do plan on adding a milder difficulty mode called "Human Mode," but these initial stage betas will have the "true" game difficulty. Also don't let the difficulty of stage 1 scare you too much, as the stages are meant to be just gradually more difficult as they continue. The way the difficulty curve goes is instead of starting at 1 and ending at 10. It starts at 8 and ends at 11 XD

System wise the game is straightforward (for now...)

-You have lightning (concentrated shot)

-Rapid sword (rapid shot)

- and Big Ass Slash (bomb)

The character's movement speed is nice and fast and even the lightning speed is quick. The rapid sword is both powerful and shoots wide. Basically I have made the character OP as hell ha. 

Don't worry too much about the scoring at this point. The way it works for now (though it's not fully developed) is that the more bombs you have in stock and the higher you stand on the screen, the faster your points increase (plus getting points from killing stuff of course) I do have some ideas for additional changes to the scoring system, but for now don't worry about it. 

There are also a BUNCH of dev tools included 

Q = Fast forward

W = infinite health

E = Screen Jump (jank checkpoints)

P = Pause

Space = instant restart (very handy, basically a load state)

and B = Checkpoint wheel (pre-made save states!)

Control and ENTER = Fullscreen toggle

 Also, if you want to buy the soundtrack do check out Schmidt's! bandcamp!

https://bagofschmidt.bandcamp.com/album/house-of-bullets-demo-1-soundtrack

if you have any questions feel free to ask, I'm sure I will be updating this post as we go. 

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SUPPORTING THE CHANNEL AND UNDERGROUND

Sincerely,

Mark MSX