21.05.06

Bullet Candy

Posted in everything, games, must have, shmups at 10:32 pm by the2bears

I received a copy of the final Windows version of Charlie Knight’s Bullet Candy today, and my cheeks are sore from grinning like a big kid all evening. I’m not kidding when I say this is one of the funnest games I’ve played for quite awhile… and I see a lot of games.

Let’s jump straight to gameplay. Bullet Candy is an arena shooter, a style rekindled somewhat in recent years by Mutant Storm and Geometry Wars. The former is one of my all-time favourite indie titles, and Bullet Storm measures up very well. It’s a faster game, or so it seems, with an amazing amount of bullets on the screen. I use my PS2 DualShock 2 controller, and the 2 analog sticks are meant for this type of fight. That said though, the game is perfectly playable using a keyboard and mouse combination as well.

I tend to approach an arena shooter by running around the edge and firing mostly towards the center. This doesn’t work so well for me with Bullet Candy, as a diverse group of enemies quickly cut off my path. I found each level, after the first few, required a bit of strategy and planning on just who to destroy first, and how to approach the level over-all. In fact, the level design and the variety of enemies is one of the games strongest qualities. It’s never boring. Each level comes with “gold ships” to collect, increasing your bonus multiplier, and other power-ups. Unfortunately the power-ups only last the duration of that level.

It’s nice to find a game that has all the little extras. By little I mean we tend to take them for granted, but considerable work goes into their creation. Bullet Candy comes with several unlockable, bonus modes. Complete the first 20 levels and Surival Mode is unlocked. This is a great one, where never ending waves of increasingly difficult enemies spawn at increasingly faster intervals. One life, that’s all you get. There’s a Minter Mode, named after gaming legend Jeff Minter. There’s a Hard Mode, the Asteroid Belt, and a Turbo Mode. I’m still working on unlocking these, but I have to give my cramped hands a brief rest. The Turbo Mode sounds absolutely manic, as the game runs as fast as your computer will allow with no attempt at a set frame rate.

The graphics are absolutely beautiful, with plenty of particles and explosions going off everywhere, and plenty of great bullet patterns, all in hi-res 1024×768. I don’t often make too big a deal on the sound, but Bullet Candy has a great soundtrack. The main theme is very cool, a jazz-type number with a bass and percussion, like something out of the old Spiderman cartoons. It’s still going through my head at the moment.

I really like this game. I consider it one of the best indie games I’ve played in the last year or two. It’s good, solid fun, the kind of game that makes you want to try to get past a level “just one more time.” I also want to emphasize how important I feel it is to support a game like this. These types of games are all but ignored by the mainstream industry, so the only way we’ll get more is if we encourage developers like Charlie Knight by buying their product. Try out the free demo if you still have doubts, but believe me, this is a game worth buying.

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