Basic Trope: A game, movie, etc, has no plot or story, not even an Excuse Plot, because it's just about the experience.
- Straight: In the Touhou Project-styled Bullet Hell game Editing of Magical Self-Redaction (Or EoMSR for short), you control a heroine fighting other danmaku-throwing characters for no particular reason.
- Exaggerated: EoMSR not only has no plot attached, it has no narrative or defined characters, it's just a mood piece.
- Downplayed: EoMSR has an Excuse Plot mentioned in the manual, but it's never expanded in-game.
- Justified: The characters are Blood Knights who fight each other simply because they enjoy it as much as the player does.
- It's a game. People play games for fun. Games can still be fun without any storyline.
- Inverted: Reality's Style Manual of Everything, or RSMoE, is a Visual Novel-styled game with a deep story, and there is no gameplay outside of choosing between the actions listed in front of you and the occasional typing into a textbox.
- Subverted:
- Despite not telling anything throughout the game, the ending somehow tries to explain your heroine's reasons to fight other characters.
- The developers made an official manga which explains the story.
- The game seems to have no plot at first, but a story is gradually uncovered as you progress through the game.
- Double-Subverted:
- But abruptly it ends with a black screen and the words "Congratulations. THE END."
- The manga is nothing but a bunch of non-canon fanservice.
- Parodied: EoMSR is an incoherent mess of stages, where the setting, and sometimes the rules, the bosses, and the gameplay itself, change abruptly, leaving the player really confused.
- Zigzagged: EoMSR has no introduction, but it regularly gives vague hints about the reasons of your heroine in random cutscenes, and it has No Ending, or at worst, a Gainax Ending.
- Averted: Mia's Rancorous Expedition: Saving Ollie, or MRE:SO, has a good balance between story and gameplay, as it unfolds the story in cutscenes between stages.
- Enforced:
- The programmers focused all their efforts on the gameplay and the fun factor, so they didn't worry about telling a story.
- There is No Budget to pay for writers.
- The creator has no writers working on the game, and has no talent in writing stories.
- The characters in Reality's Ring Of Absolute Chaos are powerful fighters who were non-combatants in the original RSMoE, and the programmers thought it would be fun to throw them into a game, give them powers and make them fight for a non-canon spinoff.
- They made this game to munch quarters, not to tell a story.
- It started as an internal Tech-Demo Game that turned out good enough to be released without adding a plot, so they didn't even bother.
- Lampshaded: "Why am I fighting?"
- Invoked: "You don't need to tell a story to make a good game."
- Exploited: Because of how popular EoMSR is, a creator of a future Bullet Hell game decides that there's no need to "waste time" telling a story if people will still buy the game.
- Defied: The programmers want to tell a story through their game, so they focused their efforts on the plot, the characters and the narrative (Of course, without being careless about the gameplay).
- Discussed: "What are we fighting over?" "It doesn't matter! Just keep shooting!"
- Conversed: "EoMSR is an excellent Bullet Hell game, although it'd have been great if they explained why the heroine is fighting all those characters with danmaku".
- Played For Horror: EoMSR uses its lack of plot, alongside ominous sounds and disturbing visuals, to create a truly visceral horror experience the likes of which Bullet Hell has never seen before.
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