Bullet Factory

In Bullet Factory, you play as a space marine trying to survive against waves of monsters. The twist is that at any point you can pause the game and drag around a large variety of parts on a grid to manipulate how your gun works, and tweak it to fit the situation at hand:

For your gun to shoot, a generator needs to spit out a projectile, to exit the gun via an 'output' part. The bullet can be buffed, split, redirected and otherwise manipulated between generation and exit of your gun. Parts can be found throughout the map in crates or chests and bought at the store in the centre of the map. The shop allows you to upgrade the size of the grid allowing more and more complex configurations.

There are several mechanics that make setting up your weapon interesting:

• Each time a part is manipulated by another part, the buff it provides is multiplied (For example, a bullet redirector is rotated by a rotator part)
  
• I've also implemented a Minecraft eske wiring system, where pressure plates and timers can trigger or toggle the activation of other parts. 
• Parts generate heat when used, which is tracked via a heat bar at the bottom of the screen. When the heat bar hits capacity, your weapon overheats and you take some damage. Then there's a slow cooling period where your weapon can't fire. To deal with this, you'll need to implement cooling parts like sprinklers and vents. 

Between part buffing, wiring and heat management you can do some very cool stuff. In fact, you'll need your creativity if you're going to stand a chance against the later waves. The resulting gameplay is a mix of vampire survivors and a puzzle game, leading to a bit more of a slower-paced but still challenging experience compared to other wave survival games.

A solid 2 years of work has gone into this, including paid work from a composer and pixel artist before life got in the way and I put the project on pause maybe a year or two ago. Looking back at it now, it seems like a shame for all that work to never see the light of day so here's the latest build!

Controls:

• Move with WASD
• Toggle weapon modes using the buttons in the top right. 
• Press space to pause
• Drag and drop parts with the mouse

I had all sorts of ambitious plans for this including enemies that were resistant to different types of projectiles and randomly generated environments. Depending on feedback I may pick the project back up, as the demo is in a reasonably finished state and the game was designed so I could easily add more parts, monsters and maps. If anybody wants to see this project fully fleshed out, I'd love to know!