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A jam submission

Bike the BulletView game page

A cycling-themed bullet hell.
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Bike the Bullet's itch.io page

How does your game fit the theme?
The main character, and many enemies are cycling, Connor works for the god of bicycles.

Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 4 days?

Yes

Did your team create the vast majority of the music during the 4 days?

Yes

oug?
oug 馃

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Comments

Submitted(+3)

Holy art style! Love it so much! Especially the intro and the creativity with the designs. I've found bullet hells are really hard to get 'right' in a short amount of time so to get patterns, upgrades and bosses in such a short amount of time is crazy. If I were to add one thing to elevate the game, I'd add some sfx for damaging enemies and getting hit by things. Getting feedback for doing things really helps that 'gamefeel'. btw I love the sfx/clips you got in there they made me laugh. Well done guys! OUG OUG 馃悞

Developer

Thank you so much! We're actually already planning adding more feedback for that, depending on what the rules will let us patch in.

Submitted(+1)

Cool artstyle, besides that i think the mechanics are there, but it just doesn't feel right, it doesn't feel right when you get hit, or when you hit an enemy. It's a difficult game, I don't really know if it's because it's that kind of game or maybe it's just unbalanced, maybe the player's hitbox is too big for the amount of projectiles and enemies on the screen and the speed at wich they move and appear, or maybe it's just the player's visual illustration and the fact that bullets can be difficult to detect in relation to the ground. I think it looks good artistically and has good patterns and attacks, it's awesome for 3 days, but it definitely needs work to be really enjoyable for me atleast.

Developer

Thanks for playing! The balance can definitely be a little off, some of that is bugs, some of that is designs. We're working on fixing both, but whether it'll get patched or not depends on what we're allowed to add.

Submitted(+2)

Nice opening cutscene, took a bit to get the hang of the bullet hell mechanics.

Didnt help that I turned the volume up thinking it was too low (no sound in cutscene) only to immediately pick up the SEEEGS beam (lol my ears, ouch) XD.

Nice work.

Developer (1 edit)

Sorry about the sound lol. I'll try to get it fixed or at least lessen the issue after the voting ends . Thanks for trying our game!

Submitted(+2)

Loved the cutscene at the beginning!
I felt the game is very hard, which is never a problem, but it doesn't reward the player enough to make up for it.

The enemy attack patterns are really interesting though, maybe if i was more into this type of game i would've enjoyed it a lot better. I've had some problems with overlapping audio, and the music can be a little repetitive, the mastering of the two first tracks is a little messed up. I enjoyed the visual style but there could be more visual feedback to help the player, there's too much happening on the screen so things like the player's damage indicator can go unnoticed.

Developer (2 edits)

Thanks for the feedback! What was the issue with the first two tracks? I'm not really experienced with audio so idk what it means when the mastering is messed up, but I'll fix it if I can. We plan to make enemies die much faster (hopefully feels more rewarding), the overlapping audio is actually more of a collision issue with the power ups (which is totally fixable after voting ends), and a visual indicator for enemy damage/clearer indicator for player damage is absolutely in the cards.

Submitted(+1)

The volume of those tracks are too different from one and another, and since the main menu is the only place you can adjust the volume that would be very convenient. Glad to hear you're still working on it!

Submitted(+2)

Really love the intro sequence, it actually got me motivated a lot, even though I am sadly not good at bullet hell games 馃槀 I liked the different "weapons", but I do feel the standard banana was a bit weak, or I just did not use it correctly (like the boomerang idea though!) Also it felt a bit like the portraits in the bottom left corner were cut off a bit? because there was something but most of the time I could not make out what exactly. Great job for also making all the audio during the jam by the way! Overall still very enjoyable even though I died a lot 馃槀馃憤 (I btw hope that there was no ending sequence like the starting sequence which I missed because I could not complete the game 馃槩)

Developer(+1)

The banana is intentionally a little weak so picking up other weapons is more of an upgrade, but we plan to make enemies quite a bit squishier in general. Also, you are totally correct about the portraits. The ones in the bottom left were in fact supposed to be in the middle left, but I had a hard time positioning them correctly on the canvas for some reason. If you want to see the boss/end cutscene, you can watch the video we have in the game's page (Although you will miss the boss start cutscene). Thanks for playing our game!

Submitted(+2)

Ah I just watched the end sequence, really nice, love that its actually a finished game 馃憣 But to be honest seeing that boss fight I am not sure if I would be able to beat it even with 10 bananas 馃槀 And I do think making them a little bit squishier is a good idea, yes 馃槉

Submitted(+2)

Welp that didn't last long... I suck. The audio was nice, but wish there was more sound in the start sequence. Art wise the start sequence was epic, but I wasn't a big fan of the rest of the game art. The game seems to run fine, would have liked a fullscreen button in settings. I felt very thrown into it too. Not bad, but wasn't my calling lol. Not many bullet hells though so that is cool

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

All of our music was composed specifically for this game, so we didn't have any track that felt appropriate for the starting cutscene. That said, the difficulty is definitely something that we intend to improve upon in the future. Thanks for playing our game!

Submitted(+2)

really good game! love the art ! :D the audio was fun too ... but holy shit m8 EU Countrys arent used to bullet hells D: so many enemys q.q 

Submitted(+2)

I really love the art style of this game ! sadly I m not skilled enough to get very far.

Submitted(+2)

This was a very fun game, however, i do think it could have been built up a little more and was slightly too unforgiving.  Feels like you were just pushed into it and was a little overwhelming. However, I really liked what I played was able to get through. Also loved the sfx haha. Good job!

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

Thanks for playing our game! I totally understand that the difficulty starts way higher than it has any right to, and it has stopped a LOT of players from seeing all the game has to offer. However, I'm glad you enjoyed the sound effects; They were hand picked by yours truly.

Submitted(+2)

Sorry I couldn't make it to the boss, Was struggling a lot with playing it. I've never been good with bullet hells though so I is probably an issue with me not so much the game. I like the sound and effects I thought they were cute. Would have liked to feel like I was destroying things more, maybe a ramp up with the difficulty to get me into the game. Either way Good job, if feels like you got a concept for what you wanted to do and were able to submit a finished project!

Developer

Thanks for playing! A common sentiment seems to be wanting a lower TTK, so we'll probably update with that after the voting period is done.

Developer

Don't worry about  it. The game is super tough, and the difficulty curve is more or less a single cliff face followed by Mount Everest. If we could, we would have definitely made a balance pass to make the weapons feel more impactful, rather than such a large focus on only dodging.  In any case, thanks for playing our game!

Submitted(+3)

I'm terrible at bullet hells but dang this looks good. Art style is awesome. Beginning story was great too.

Developer

Thanks for playing!

Developer

Thanks for playing and glad you liked the art style! I had a lot of fun designing the sprites and the environment art. Also the gag of having all the enemies wear shades (even the drones).
(pssst, don't tell anyone but there is a fun little aster egg hidden somewhere in the background art ;) )

(1 edit) (+2)

This is the Dark Souls of bullet hells. The in-game and cutscene art is done really well although a marking for the player's hitbox would have helped. I really liked the boss battle theme!

My best attempt:

Developer

Thank you! It's definitely a little harder than we intended, but if we could capture that dark-souls feeling of satisfaction when you do well then thats great!

Submitted(+2)

Game is really fun and the cutscene at the beginning adds so much charm

Developer

Thanks for playing! glad you liked the cutscenes, our team worked hard to make the vibes immaculate.

Submitted(+2)

Very difficult game! I love the cutscene at the beginning 

Developer

Thanks for playing our game! Yeah, the game is extremely difficult partly due to a bug where the player hitbox is too large. We added tips to the game description, so hopefully anyone who wants to will be able to at least reach the boss fight!

Submitted(+2)

I was a bit sad I wasn't able to damage the drones at the start. I think the damageable enemies can be communicated slightly better. I want to see more of the game but I wasn't skilled enough to progress. Sad oug.

Developer (4 edits) (+2)

Thanks for playing our game! The drones are actually totally damageable. In fact, the Famichiki weapon seems to be the strongest weapon cause it kill drones instantly on a direct attack. The level is really hard! If you haven鈥檛 already, try reading the tips in the game description!

Submitted(+2)

Well this is one hell of a difficult game ! For some reason I felt compelled to try again, and again... and.. again... I spent about 2 and a half hour playing : the first 30min just to reach the boss, the rest desperately trying to beat it.

I've never been much of a bullet hell fan where there is so much going on that you have to purely focus on dodging to stay alive and whether the attacks land is mostly luck, unless you get the right power up at the right time.

The boss fight was such a high jump in difficulty curve, I tried over a hundred times but only a few attempts made it past the first few cycles. The attack patterns cover the screen so densely at first it felt absolutely impossible, though with some luck I found a safe spot for the close pattern and thought there might be one for the far one too.

I managed to find one eventually, though it took breaking the game by tabbing out for ~30s during the intro of the boss so it appeared way down to understand why it was so hard to find one : the last shot of the far pattern is aimed directly at the player, so depending on where you are at that time it can make or break the dodgeability.

Anyhow, I found a path that would let me get through both patterns unscathed when well executed, but little did I know this was this easy part.

By that time I had managed to beat the first phase a few times but promptly died to the various Omega Attack Pattern Of Unavoidable Doom the second phase has to offer.

I was starting to realize that the true difficulty of that first phase comes from managing to kill off the goons at exactly the right time that you can finish dodging the patterns before you have to dodge the bike being thrown back at you. For some reason there's extremely little time between the patterns, and once a pattern has started you have to get in position immediately and stop moving as even the tiniest movement almost guarantees getting hit. Adding to the goon dying at the wrong time issue, they don't stop their attack pattern when killed until all shots have been fired, making the already air-tight woven bullet knitting into a vacuum-tight one. On top of that the power ups being completely random throw in an extra layer of unpredictable-ness, which I found usually worked best by avoiding taking power ups altogether. And if that wasn't enough, the goons seem to randomly take damage in a completely untelegraphed way. I am not sure if it was a bug but a goon on the other side of the screen suddenly taking 3 quarter of its health instant and dying at a random point screwed me over many times.

Anyway, if I somehow made it past that phase, I still had to overcome the boss' patterns, which ask for even faster reactions, though there was a sliver of hope as one attack pattern seems to be bugged and doesn't deal any damage.

But getting that concentric fireball circles pattern multiple times in a row would be an RNGesus miracle. The straight line one is manageable if you don't get caught in a bad spot, but the lightning one ? At this point I'm convinced it's impossible to dodge.

Anyway I persisted, I had been going for about an hour and a half when I finally got to the boss again and seemed to have had the aforementioned miracle happen ! I definitely took my revenge on the boss :

I continued trying the fight for a good 30min after that as I was slightly disappointed in how it ended, but never got this lucky again, and I eventually gave up.

Well that was a wall of text ! A few things I wanted to mention :

  • The voice clips are fun the first couple times but they get old very quick
  • The player's hitbox is really unclear, even after all this time I was still confused as to why sometimes I phased through bullets just fine and sometimes I took damage from afar, the bikes especially seem to have very weird collision.
  • You can collide with bullets that have gone out of the screen I'm pretty sure.
  • The cutscenes were really cool, though maybe going a bit fast since they require finding text to read. I wonder what the cutscene after beating the boss looks like.
Developer(+2)

I made the cutscenes!!!!! I tried to make it really shitposty and funny so glad you liked them :))
Also the music!! Did you like the boss music? :)

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the play! That attempt looked so close omg i was rooting for you the whole time!

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

Yeah, actually the game is way harder than it should be due to a myriad of small bugs that all increase the difficulty. The player hitbox is really supposed to be just his helmet, and that boss phase 2 attack with the zigzags is supposed to be WAY smaller than it is.

Submitted(+1)

I suck at the game... or else it's too hard. Either way couldn't really get far into it. Seems fun though, the weapons all being related to Connor in some way with the real sound bites was fun.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for playing our game! The stage is a bit tough, so we added some tips in the description if you want to give it another try. We'd love if everyone who tries our game reaches and tries out the boss (it's our favorite part of the game :) )!