Submissions open from 2026-01-15 06:00:00 to 2026-03-01 06:00:00
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Welcome to Bullet Hell Artistry!

We - your jam hosts - are Bullet Hell Engines - a Discord server for all things bullet hell game development! We offer social spaces for sharing your works (including non-gamedev ones), as well as engine-specific forums for gamedev help and discussion (mostly bullet hell STGs, but not always).

Bullet Hell Artistry (BHA) is a bi-annual game jam that we have been organizing for the past seven years (since August 2019)! The goal is to make a shoot-em-up game following a specific theme/ruleset, with gameplay quality being the main focus. 

Even though "bullet hell" is in the contest name, we're pretty lax on its inclusion in your game. How many bullets is too little or too much? That's up to you.

If you're interested in checking out the entries and results for previous BHAs, check out community member Sparen's contest database here!

The Theme is... Unceasing Terrors!

BHA themes are decided by the community. This time, the winning theme, suggested by BlindVoid, is Evil Shmup you found on an unlabeled disk. According to the original description:

So of course you chucked it in to the computer and gave it a go, surely nothing could go wrong even though I don't remember that funny character on the title screen menacingly staring into my soul hm oh well.

Uh oh, turns out the game is haunted by evil apparitions who designed it specifically to mess with you and drive you to madness. You must defeat the ghost haunting this disk or you'll be cursed forevermore and subject to eternal torment.

Make a haunted shmup basically.

Contest Rules

1. Engine: You are free to pick any engine of your choice. However, it is essential that your project is easily accessible for others to play. Please provide a launcher or executable file to avoid requiring users to download additional tools, software, or perform online logins to access your project.

2. Entry Size: You are not limited to pattern count or time limit. But refrain from making the game too long or short without a good reason, otherwise you risk to yield less points.

3. Voting Rubrics: Each judge of this contest has their own way of ranking entries. Here's a list of each judge's sheet:

4. Copyright: 

  • You can use any characters in your game for as long as you have permission to use them or are characters of your own;
  • The audiovisual assets in your project may not be subject to copyright not under your ownership or for which you do not have explicit usage permissions. If you don't know where to look for those, our Resource category can get you started!

5. Teamwork: Working as a group or with other people is allowed, but have in mind that only one prize will be given.

6. Submissions: Please submit your finished entry to the jam page in itch.io before the due date.

7. Communication: For questions, discussions, and WIP-sharing related to the jam, join the BHE server (linked at the beginning) and mingle with the community! Note that you can only get prizes by joining the server (see below).

8. Be Fabulous.

Discord Prizes

Alongside bragging rights on the itch.io results page, we also provide prizes to the winners in our Discord server! 

For the top 3 prizes (Gold-Silver-Bronze), the Overall category will be used. Prize distributions will be:

TOP 3

🥇 GRAND PRIZE!

"BHA#11 Golden Prize-Winner" Role + 1-month Discord Nitro (or Steam Gift Card)

🥈 "BHA#11 Silver Prize-Winner" Role. 🥉 "BHA#11 Bronze Prize-Winner" Role.