Bullet♥︎ is unabashedly Bullet♥︎.
Level 99 Games beamed Bullet♥︎ into this universe from an alternate one where its diverse cast was already beloved in profile pictures and fan forums. In that universe, this game is actually an anime, or a shoot ’em up, with loyal fans for whom the board game “Bullet Heart” is a surprisingly faithful adaptation. In our world, Bullet♥︎ is not emulating anything but rather borrowing the visuals of anime and shoot ’em ups like Touhou to create something wholly original.
The basic premise is as follows: bullets are raining down on you from the heavens (read: being pulled from your bag into one of five columns), leapfrogging over another towards the bottom of your player board and your health bar. All bullets in your bag must be placed in three minutes, and at any time during placements you may pause the incoming onslaught and try to manage the chaos. Maybe spend 1 AP to scooch a bullet here, or use one of your character’s abilities to line up a crosshair there. By matching pattern cards, you’ll blast bullets from the sky and return them to sender. Likely, you won’t be able to dispatch all (or most) of the projectiles coming down at you, which means next round’s salvo will be far less manageable. This is not a game about clearing volley after volley and walking away unscathed; it is a game about trying (and failing) to scrape by.
The three minute timer is definitely the most divisive aspect of Bullet♥︎, and it is not present in all game modes. Pull a chip, place a chip, check for patterns, repeat. If it wasn’t for the clock ticking, this could be a borderline meditative experience. Before the pressure is on, looking for opportunities and lining up chips is not unlike getting a match-4 in something like Bejeweled. If you enjoy the thoughtful puzzle of analyzing every last inch of the board before committing to a play, looking at good options and choosing to look further still for better ones, you will likely enjoy the timerless Boss mode. If you, like me, enjoy the way Lumines or Tetris start out as pleasant, satisfying pattern-matching and devolve into frantic button mashing and searching for any out whatsoever, you’ll enjoy the Free For All mode.
I’ve also grown to love Bullet♥︎’s cast of characters, even as I was initially hesitant. The eight youngish anime heroines here are all unique, almost to a fault. When I teach Bullet♥︎, there is exactly one character in the box which I feel is completely appropriate for a first-time player– which I struggle to square with how otherwise accessible it is. What each of these characters lack in simplicity, they make up for with asymmetry and diversity in play style. Each girl has their own pattern cards, means of manipulating bullets, ways of destroying bullets, and passive abilities. There is a character in here you’ll like enough to “main,” they’ve made sure of that.
Take, for instance, Senka Kasun, who uses a pair of crosshairs from which all her patterns emanate. She, and she alone, has the unique challenge of needing to aim her sight– and gets to re-focus her gaze to another cluster whenever she destroys special star bullets. Powerful, but requires some skill and forethought. Meanwhile, Ling-Ling Xiao tallies up the value of bullets near each other and arithmetically destroys other projectiles, valuing being shot at by higher calibers because she likes the big numbers, I guess. Adelheid has some of the hardest patterns with the strictest requirements, but has ways to flip existing bullets over, treating them as all colors to ease the burden. That’s just three of the eight. Each of these characters offers such a completely different challenge while still feeling like they’re “playing the same game.”
Esfir Volkova is the essential “learner” character with no gimmicks. Everyone else is doing some cool whacky stuff that requires a game or two to figure out independently from learning the game’s core mechanics. A part of me wishes there was another character with a complexity level similar to Esfir. Bullet♥︎ is bursting at the seams to get all of its beloved characters with all of their gimmicks into the game, so I understand why Esfir is the only simple one.
I also like the way Bullet♥︎ escalates towards a quick and well-earned endgame. The box says fifteen minutes, which at first I doubted, but it is true. In free for all, each round you survive increases a Heat track, which causes more bullets to spawn in from the ether into your bag. However, the main source of damage coming your way is the bullets your neighbors have been clearing. Whenever you destroy a bullet, you place it facedown in front of your opponent, who will draw it into their sight next round.
Obstacles aren’t leaving the ecosystem at any time; they are only compounding. Destroying a threatening 4-bullet that nearly jumped the line into your health bar sends that same ringer back at your rival. Clearing a couple star bullets, which gives you neat little bonuses depending on your character, means your opponent will have that same opportunity next round.
Often, the endgame involves two players succumbing to a torrential rain of lead and checking to see how many bullets they had left in their bag to determine the winner. It feels, for lack of a better term, skillful. Earned. But also: if we got to that point together, we feel some comradery and achievement. We survived until it was impossible to survive any longer. “Do you see how many bullets are on my board right now? I was never making it out of that,” is fun, even if you lost because you pulled one-too-many big 4-bullets before your opponent did.
The boss battle mode also creates the feeling of impossibility and defying the odds. Each character’s flip side is a version of themselves as a unique boss with traits and abilities similar to those the character had. These boss battles are not easy, though. There is no time limit and they can be tackled cooperatively, which gives Bullet♥︎ even more ways to get to the table. Again, I do think a “beginner” boss would have been appreciated for the sake of being used while learning the game. As is, the easiest boss for me (Senka, sniper girl, her evil version) is so unlike the other boss fights it functions less as a tutorial and more a strange one-off mode. Regardless, once you’ve gotten the hang of the system, these bosses are a treat to bash your head against, even if they can sometimes feel “cheesy” with guaranteed damage and the like.
Bullet♥︎ is not only a great casual multiplayer duel game but also an extremely puzzly and fast-playing solo game. Like I said, there’s a lot in this box. A whole fandom’s worth. That’s just value, folks.
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