Lure of the Yamabiko by Nick Howard
After spending the first 9 hours of the jam completely blank on an idea, I decided to stop thinking while sober and instead go pick up a bottle of bourbon. Decided to take a short cut through a small out of the way, run down road to reach the main road, a bug hit me in my face. Then someone on a bicycle nearly hit me, then shortly after came a car down this barely-wide-enough for one person, let alone a car road. So I came up with the idea of an "infinite runner" bullet hell, with random monsters and bosses spawning periodically!
Controls
- Z - Shooting
- X - Bombing
- Shift - Focused / Slowed Movement
- ESC - Pausing / Menu Cancellation
- SPACE - Menu Selection
Gameplay
See how far you can get each run! Once you die, you'll have an oppertunity to upgrade the player / game experience and a chance to get even further.
※ Due to this being made during a weekend while working a full time job for one of the days, I could only do a handful of monsters / upgrades. In the future I plan on updating / continuing development and I'll add a ton of extra stuff!
Credits
Programming, enemy sprites, bullet sprites were done by me!
Music, particle effects, and the background were either royalty free or purchased in the past.
Music : Juhani Junkala [SubspaceAudio] (https://opengameart.org/content/5-chiptunes-action)
Background: Ansimuz (https://opengameart.org/content/forest-background)

| HTML5 | https://jnho228.itch.io/lure-of-the-yamabiko |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/lure-of-the-yamabiko |
Ratings
| Overall | 1187th | 3.361⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 484th | 3.639⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1678th | 2.583⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1817th | 2.528⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1424th | 3.083⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 13🗳️ | 14🗨️ |
@excy I had no idea if mixing these styles of games would work or not, but I found myself playing it while testing more than intended and seems to be a good combo! Just need more polish to really get it feeling right. As for the upgrades, I almost had the class written that lets me make upgrades with a fixed title, icon, price, and level / point requirement, and (in theory) the upgrade screen would pull from that accordingly and not have duplicates... however, I just ran out of time, so I kept the testing "randomly generate everything" filler in place since it did half-assed get the job done. :shrug:
I enjoyed a lot shooting at the bunny and the fox :)
I would've liked being able to perform fine movement; I found myself accidentally running into projectiles because movement is all-or-nothing, and doesn't really allow for carefully weaving between projectile when you're already close to them.
Great entry!
1. A roguelite meta with upgrades. It seems like something obvious in retrospect, but afaik I have never seen a true bullet hell with this style of metasystem, maybe a normal shmup at best. It was enjoyable to grind it out. I did maybe 6 or 7 loops, usually beating a couple bosses each time.
2. Specifically colored balls. When the fox shot out 2 orange balls and 1 white one, I thought that was a magnificent touch and it really stood out.
I liked the game but I also like bullet hells in general. I would've liked the slow button to be a bit slower, or you might want 2 levels of slow like in some Touhou games, but I managed anyways because the bullet patterns were relatively forgiving. I did find it VERY enjoyable to move point blank to the fox and bomb it for half it's health. Super fun.
The only thing I think that it's not good, is the hitbox of getting the points/coins, a bigger hitbox that takes more points aroud, would generate less frustration when picking them up.
Good job!
@kamilo Thank you so much! :D
@binaryspark The Touhou series are some of my favorite games. I’m glad you found it polished, haha. I felt like I seriously left a lot under polished. I did make the left-shift a “focused” movement, but it could have definitely been slower. I think I just did a half speed instead of something way slower. Thank you for your feedback.
@euix I appreciate the feedback here a lot. I have a tendency to rely on “randomness” for “expanded content” but what it really is is just “a few things jumbled around each time,” so I do appreciate that being said. When I eventually revisit this style in the future, I’m thinking of having a Touhou-like story progression, bosses with themed levels, and when you die while playing, it would restart you but give you more tailored upgrades. But I definitely do recognize that I have a tendency to think randomness would make infinite cool stuff instead of “well this is just kind of like last time but not really…” I’ll work on it! :)
@peachtreeoath I love roguelites (actually working on one in my spare time!) and I love bullet hells. I felt like it was something I hadn’t seen anywhere else, either, and I wanted to make it a reality. Definitely, when I revisit this, I’m going to really flesh it out!
@shoc Thank you so much for the kind words! I really meant to make the coins have an enlarged radius around them so they would “fall” towards the player for collection but I got so busy doing last minute things I completely forgot. But it was definitely on the todo list! I just ran out of time, haha.
@sleepystudios Thank you very much! I really like this die-and-improve system. I think in the future I’ll definitely make it the further you progress the more powerful / impactful the upgrades are to help get you through the entire game. About the left over bullets, I went back and forth of “should I despair all the bullets an enemy spawned when they died or just leave them” and ultimately left them, but forgot I had some bullets spawning at 0 moveSpeed… ^^; I’m glad you enjoyed it!
Thank you everyone for the feedback!