The sequel to Bullet Heaven, both of which are spinoffs to the Epic Battle Fantasy series.
Purchase the expanded version on Steam here
. You can also play it for free at Kongregate (here) or on Newgrounds (here)
Bullet Heaven 2 contains the following tropes:
- Allegedly Free Game: Downplayed - you can play the entire game for free, but paying unlocks three extra characters, several new stages (including tougher bosses and survival levels), and an instant cash bonus.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Among the many things in the shop in Bullet Heaven 2 is alternate player skins. They initially were just cosmetic, but the game was eventually updated to give them slight bonuses to certain stats.
- Anti-Frustration Features: The game includes several ways to lessen difficulty, including bullet clearing after every wave, the ability to bomb and avoid taking damage (effectively giving you extra hits and letting you lessen the blow of losing a perfect wave streak), and not requiring a restart if the bonus waves are failed. Interestingly, there are handicaps that allow you to remove the former two features, in exchange for a better score multiplier.
- Ascended Meme:
- The Monoliths' Boss in Mook Clothing status in the prequel becomes this, when the appearance of a Cosmic Monolith midway through the game causes the entire party to panic.
- One of the higher-rated comments on Bullet Heaven is a statement to the effect that after you've beaten the final boss, it feels like you can go out in a rainstorm and not get wet, because you can dance between the raindrops. Come its sequel...
Lance: I guess the best way to stay dry in the rain is to get good at playing Bullet Hell games. - Asteroids Monster: Some large enemies split into four lesser enemies when defeated.
- Astral Finale: The final world is space-themed.
- Boss-Only Level: Downplayed - each boss level has a single wave of standard enemies before the boss itself arrives.
- Boss Warning Siren: A visual version: "WARNING: DANGER! BOSS INCOMING!"
- Close-Contact Danger Benefit: 20 or 50 points are added every time you graze a bullet, which the game signifies by making it temporarily bigger (obviously not enough to hit you) and playing a quiet sound. If the attack is a very big projectile, you can get 100 points from the graze.
- Comeback Mechanic: The game slows down if you reach 1 heart of health, allowing you to a chance to finish the next wave(s) undamaged and heal up. Averted if you enable the "One Heart" handicap, since that would otherwise turn into a bullet-slowing cheat.
- Defeat Equals Explosion: The game has big bombs and spike balls, which both explode when destroyed, but the former can also damage enemies!
- Difficulty by Acceleration: Survival mode has enemy bullets gain 5% speed each wave, as pointed out by the characters. Enemy health also increases with each wave.
- Easy-Mode Mockery: Upgrades are called "cheats" and decrease your score multiplier.
- Export Save: The 2.0 update added the ability to export 16KB+ save files in the odd .meow extension. They're downloaded from the game and loaded from the file explorer. A program like Notepad++ can easily open them, though.
- Friendship Moment: Despite how much Natz snarks at Matt, Matt comforts her when her entomophobia goes haywire by promising her he won't let any bugs touch her. Later, Matt and Lance start to lose hope against fighting Akron in the Void, during which she tells them that they can treat them like any other enemy and they'll be fine.
- Hand Wave: Matt's reaction to Natalie's complaint that she can't breathe during level 2-3.Matt: Don't worry! Thanks to the developer, we can breathe underwater for no reason! It's actually kind of cool!
- Harder Than Hard: Heavenly mode is one step above Hard, with twice as many bullets.
- Kaizo Trap: Averted, thanks to the Anti-Frustration Features above, and in that bullets from the blasts released by defeated bosses are harmless due to being purely cosmetic. Even if you disable bullet clearing, lingering bullets do not cause you to lose if you beat wave 10 of any stage.
- Normally, I Would Be Dead Now: The game allows you a small window of time to counter damage by using a bomb. Even if you have one heart left, meaning it actually prevents death here. This feature can be disabled via a handicap that removes this window, in exchange for a higher score.
- Number of the Beast: You get a medal for dying with over 666 bullets on the screen.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: The survival levels play this to the letter, but you also have a bomb and counter-bombing can't be disabled here; this effectively gives you one spare hit. It's still lower than the five hits you can effectively take normally, although you rank and score will suck if you beat a level that way.
- Can be invoked by the player with the One Heart handicap, in exchange for a better score multiplier. The true form of this would be enabling this and "No Death-Bombing"!
- Red Filter of Doom: The screen briefly turns the background red when you die, alongside slowing remaining enemies and bullets.
- Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: NoLegs against Slime Bunny, when Slime Bunny threatens his position of cute pet for the team to fawn over.
- Superboss: The game has nine bonus bosses, with each one being a tougher Palette Swap of an existing boss. They're exclusive to the Steam release and the expansion pack. Note that there's ten bosses in the normal game; only the first nine are given bonus counterparts because Akron is best left as a unique boss.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: Lampshaded; in the underwater stages, Natalie worries about drowning until Matt points out that the developer made everyone able to breathe underwater for no reason.
- Taking You with Me: Enemies release bullets when killed on higher difficulties. Even in Normal difficulty, some enemies and all enemy bombs do this!
- Title Drop: Lance states that if he survives long enough, he'll witness true bullet heaven. Anna lampshades this.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Matt's reaction when Natalie points out that the water they've been breathing contains fish and whale poo.
- Weaksauce Weakness: The World 6 boss uses mini-eyeballs as armor, but has lower HP than most bosses, which can be exploited by using piercing secondary weapons, rendering this boss a Glass Cannon. Lance tells it after you beat the boss the first time.
