Introduction

Hello everyone! In this post, I’ll make a short introduction to the project that I’ll be starting for #devtober.

This is the first solo project that I do in a long time, mainly due to lack of self-discipline, so I hope I can find the motivation to pull through!

Main concept

If you’re familiar with danmaku / bullet hell games, you’ll know that usually the main way to deal damage is by shooting projectiles. There might also be closer-range weapons as a secondary option, but the mechanics are not centred around them.

For this project, I want to fully embrace melee weapons and (mostly) eliminate long-range projectiles. To accommodate for this, the danmaku patterns will always leave some openings so that you’re able to get close to the enemies. The main idea is that you’ll need to detect these openings and find your way through the bullet curtain until you’re in range to attack, then retreat until the next opportunity arises.

Goals

My goal for this #devtober is to finish a proof of concept / prototype that showcases the main idea. If it turns out to be fun, I’ll consider continuing the development to make it a full game!

I always find it very hard to start new projects, so that’s why I’m taking this challenge as an opportunity to hopefully make a solid base to continue building from.

First steps

There are quite some loose ends regarding the game’s design, so for the next few days, I’ll be spending some time polishing these ideas, and thinking about viable ways to implement them. This’ll probably also include coding some basic mechanics to get a feel for them; I believe that focusing too much in theoretical design without trying out stuff in practice is not a good idea.

After that, I’ll write another devlog explaining my conclusions and detailing the design decisions that I made and why I made them. I will also work on a more concrete definition of the project’s scope and try to come up with a reasonable roadmap.

Closing words

I’ll end this post with a bit of fun trivia regarding the project’s name: danmaken. It is a word play on danmaku (弾幕), which translates to “bullet curtain”. The 弾 “dan” part is the same, but the 幕 “maku” part has been replaced by 魔剣 “maken”, which sounds similar but means “magical sword”, making reference of course to the melee aspect of the game.

That’s all for now. Thank you for taking your time to read!