Hello! In this post, I’d like to tell you more about the why, what, and how of our not-so brand-new project: Bullet Waste: The Wastewalker.

The Bullet Waste is dead, long live the Bullet Waste!

Bullet Waste was originally a game jam project that we liked so much that we wanted to expand the concept of a first-person bullet hell into a full game. We iterated through multiple gameplay mechanics that could work in the final game, many of which were quickly discarded or changed to the point where they no longer resembled the original idea. I like to think that, at one point, we had created a proto-DOOM: The Dark Ages, and through our experiments I can see many of the same problems that that game had to deal with, but I digress.

A breakthrough came when we tried to iterate on the feedback from CoreMechanicsDemo 2 (and its patches). One could finally see the direction we wanted to take the gameplay in. However, there was a problem: we had started working on different projects in parallel (e.g. Figa Legend) and the development of the game became frustratingly stagnant. Because of this, the project’s leadership was passed on to me as I was the most familiar with the concept of the desired gameplay and had many strong opinions and ideas about the changes the game needed.

We also developed an achievable plan for the final content of the game, not plagued with ambitions of greatness (not to say that we abandoned them). It’s still ambitious, but we’re confident in our ability to deliver it.

With all these changes and the shift in development direction toward releasing the game, we decided that the title of our game has to somewhat reflect that.

The Wastewalker

Our player character has remained unnamed since the beginning of the project. Internally, we always called him The Protagonist to play with the idea that he is THE protagonist of the in-universe events and that the story revolves around him. Well, as funny as it would be for other characters to call him that, we opted for a more lore-appropriate name: The Wastewalker. He walks through the wastelands of Bullech, and I think it’s beautiful. And he isn’t the only Wastewalker in the story…

With that being said, the new title (or more accurately - subtitle) emerged naturally. At its core, Bullet Waste: The Wastewalker is still the same Bullet Waste we’ve been working on, with the exception that, much like finally giving the protagonist a name, we’ve pinned down the core mechanics of the game. We’ve also made a brand new teaser trailer and we finally have a Steam page, so be sure to wishlist the game.

Core changes

Some of the issues mentioned here were addressed in more depth in the previous Bullet Waste development post, but with the leadership change, the solutions slightly differ ;).

Since the beginning, we’ve struggled with the bullet hell aspect of the game. Do you remember that in the first demo before you could kill a Skullpion you had to make it panic? As cool as that behaviour was, it was a counterintuitive gimmick for most players. At its core, this mechanic was in the game to force the player to do some cool parkour. When that didn’t work, we added grandiose bullet hell attacks during which the enemy was killable. This made the player powerless as they had to wait for an enemy to begin this attack. Also, it forced arenas to be basically flat surfaces with lots of pass-through climbable walls (and the playtesters still, to some extent, ignored the attacks). Finally, we’ve found that simple area-denying attacks (like Striker’s swipe or Floweye’s petal walls) that aren’t strictly aimed at the player but are predictable and very easy to dodge make the player actively parkour and avoid bullets.

We’ve also focused more on proper arena geometry, because as we’ve noticed most of the bugs that players have experienced in previous demos were due to weirdly placed colliders and the whole physics system our player character was using. Those issues have been addressed, mostly by implementing our own player movement script that gives us more control and makes wastewalking smoother and more fluid. Furthermore, the design of the arenas is now more vertical, having 2–3 levels with enemies. This in itself forces the player to climb and jump on platforms just to get to an enemy and kill them.

What to expect?

Even though it is a big change for us, for you it should be business as usual, as we’re still polishing the gameplay and mechanics. We already went with the new demo version to the AGH Games Hall conference, where we’ve seen players naturally play in the way we want, so that’s a big positive for us. We’re planning to create a proper demo by December this year, with a full release planned somewhere at the turn of 2027 and 2028.

With all that being said, keep in mind that we’re doing this as a hobby and not full-time, so the plans can change. I will leave you with this inspirational quote of the great mind Mr. John Pompeii from his poem titled “Bastille”.

But if you close your eyes
Does it almost feel like nothing changed at all?