Bullet Town

1/5

A mobile arcade shooter with roguelike elements, set in a humorous wild west-inspired world.

I worked on Bullet Town as a gameplay programmer intern, and had responsibilities such as the redesign of player progression, and the design and implementation of new powerups and bonuses.

The biggest challenge I had to tackle was the player progression part. Originally, everything in the game was available from the start, except for the powers and characters that had to be bought with in-game currency.

I suggested an alternate version of the first part of the game, where not only powers and characters were introduced one after the other, but base mechanics as well. For instance, the 'frenzy' mode activated after filling a gauge by taking hits is not available nor displayed in the first level. The same goes for other mechanics such as money, powerups, and even the player's health.
After some refinement, this was the version that was prefered by the game director and implemented in the final build.

Design highlights

Gameplay summary

Before delving into the tasks I worked on for this project, I need to briefly explain the way the game works to make what will follow easier to understand.

In each level of Bullet Town, the character walks along a street lined with procedurally generated buildings on each side. The character moves automatically forward, and stops in front of certain buildings to start a fight with the enemies there.

During the gunfight, the view shifts to first person. The player cannot aim directly: instead a crosshair automatically bounces on the edges of the screen, and the player has to fire their gun when it aligns with an enemy, which requires patience. Shooting also make the crosshair immediately change direction, which is helpful when it is going the wrong way. The player can fire six times before needing to reload, which takes time. The player character cannot move during the fight.

The enemies on the other hand move continuously from left to right and right to left, and periodically shoot at the player. The player takes damage when hit, but the enemies might miss their shots.

The fight ends when all enemies are defeated, or when the timer runs out, after what the player proceeds to walk to the next fight. One temporary power-up can be picked after every fight and lasts until the end of the level.

A level is completed once the boss at the end of the level is defeated (there is no timer for the boss fight).

Player progression

As the game director wanted to make the progression and learning of the game smoother and more meaningful, he put me in charge of redesigning it.

The idea that I came up with was to strip the game of its mechanics at the start, even the most important ones, and make them unlockable after each boss. I designed and proposed two different versions of this: a linear version and a non-linear one.

The Linear Version

The linear version is the most straightforward: at first, the player can almost do nothing except shoot and take damage. After beating the boss of the level, the player unlocks a new mechanic that expands the gameplay.

The farmer boss unlocks temporary power-ups and the hub where the player can upgrade the powers of their characters and buy new characters;
The bounty hunter boss unlocks permanent powers for every character, as well as the ability to earn and spend money;
The skinny cow-boy boss unlocks the frenzy gauge (which temporarily changes the way the crosshair moves when it is filled) as well as the reputation system (reputation points are needed in order to unlock harder levels);
The sharpshooter boss unlocks new, stronger temporary power-ups;
The prisoner boss unlocks epic-level power-ups;
The mexican boss ends the game whend defeated.

Some other mechanics were also planned to be unlockable after defeating bosses, but are not in this list since there was not enough bosses in the game at that time.

This version allows the player to learn one mechanic at the time, and was intended to make the game easier to learn while giving a true sense of accomplishment and reward after defeating a boss.

The Non-linear Version

As the name suggests, this version did not follow a pre-written order for the levels. Instead, the player could choose between each level which boss they wanted to tackle next, according to what reward they wanted most at the moment. Obviously, this meant that the core mechanics (such as frenzy or money) would have to be available from the start, which made the game slightly more complex in the first stages. For this version, the boss unlock new permanent powers to pick instead of new game mechanics.

After comparing and discussing the different version along with the game director, we finally decided that the linear version was more interesting, both in terms of rewards and learning curve, and thus it was the version that was implemented.

New characters

One other thing I was tasked with was to design new characters for the enemies. Each enemy in bullet town has a unique power or mechanic, for instance skinny cow-boys can jump to dodge a bullet aimed at their legs, bounty hunter wear a hat protecting their head from the first shot they take etc.

I tried to imagine characters that would add a little bit of diversity to the cast, with unique and interesting powers.

The shaman: a native american man with an eagle perched on the arm. If the shaman is killed, the eagle attacks the player in retaliation, dealing heavy damage. If the eagle is killed before the shaman, the shaman's rate of fire increases.
The conjurer: a black woman wearing a top hat, practicioner of voodoo. Casts a curse on one of the player's cartridges when they reload. If a cursed bullet hits an enemy, it bounces back at the player.
The woodcutter: a big beardy man with a double-barrel shotgun. Needs two headshots to go down.
The huntress: a native american woman wielding a bow. Takes a long time to prepare her shots, but they are very accurate.
The hatter: an asian man wearing a very big hat. Periodically gives a new hat to an enemy who doesn't wear one (hats act as head armor in Bullet Town).
The undertaker: a tall man with long legs and a tall hat. When another enemy is killed, he turns him into a coffin that causes the player to lose money if they shoot it.
The priest: a black man in robes. He holds a bible to his chest which protects him like a hat. Doesn't shoot but periodically waves a cross at the player, making the crosshair change direction toward the edges of the screen.
The knife thrower: an asian circus artist using knives instead of a gun. She can throw her knives at the player's bullet in mid-air to stop them.
The man in a barrel: a man hidden inside a big wooden barrel. Peeks out to shoot from time to time. The barrel protects him, but can be destroyed after being shot two times. The man runs away once his barrel is destroyed.