Love Thy Enemy
The Void Rains Upon Her Heart is a Boss Rush Bullet Hell Shoot 'Em Up with rogue-lite elements developed by one-man indie studio Veyeral Games and published by The Hidden Levels, that follows the tale of several different alien girls who are members of a race called the Zaraden, trapped in a cave and surrounded by bizarre monsters. Each of them must escape by using the only power she has, the ability to love those creatures into submission. It won't be easy though, as there are many monsters that lurk in the shadows, and none of them will go down easy. Even so, love them until they love her back.
The game released on PC via Steam in Early Access on February 14, 2018, and currently has 4 playable characters, 81 bosses and 314 Gifts, with the final version having 5 playable characters, even more bosses and Gifts, with more final bosses and a completed story for each playable character. The game is also planned to be ported to consoles in the future after the release from early access on Steam.
General Tropes
- 13 Is Unlucky: Inverted with the "Lucky 13" dream, which you get by receiving 13 Power Gifts in one Story run.
- Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: In Endless Stress, the prices of Solara's gifts increase as you buy more gifts of that type.
- Aggressive Play Incentive:
- The "absorb X bullets with panic attacks" challenges are intended to encourage the player to try using panic attacks (i.e. a weaker variety of the Smart Bomb trope). This shows them that the game won't penalize them for using panics, which helps push them to use them more liberally.
- The character Alter Defect all but forces you to play aggressively. When she starts off, her only decent means of offense is her short-range feather shots, encouraging you to get up close to the boss. If you try to slowly whittle down the boss's health bar using your single starting helper, you'll find yourself at low health thanks to Alter Defect's gimmick of a continuous HP drain (though it can't finish her off on its own). She does regain HP from comboing the boss, and a full combo will get her an extra helper (making her long-range damage more usable), so you really want full combs — and as long as you manage not to get hit, keeping up the combo is easier when you're aggressive.
- All Your Powers Combined: All three shot types have a Wonderful gift associated with them that makes their bullets cycle through all five elements.
- Amnesia Loop: Every morning, the monsters who the Zaraden girls loved and befriend would forget all about them and the Zaraden lose memories too, which why the game is played in runs. It's soon revealed the memory loss caused by rain when the Zaraden have overcome the effects of wiping memories.
- Antagonist Title: The Void.
- Anti-Villains: Even though they've shown hostility toward the Zaraden and trying to harm them, the monsters are actually overwhelmed with fear and don't know how to express love and affection, so the creatures are lonely and want friendship. The only exception to this seems to be Totaria.
- All There in the Manual: The cards you radiate reveals some facts about the monsters you fight in the game, as well as the power-up gifts you receive.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- The Link Synapse will warn you if you try to take out a gift specific to a shot type you don't have, as it'll just go to waste unless you happen to obtain that shot type during the run.
- If you die too much, you'll unlock the Defect, a player character with a full heal after battle effect which will make it much more easier to keep healthy enough through a whole run.
- Arbitrary Weapon Range:
- Feather shots have a short range, and disappear once they're out of it. Some gifts can increase their range, however.
- Auras deal an impressive 96 DPS to everything within their short range, and a much less impressive 6 DPS to everything else.
- Area of Effect:
- Auras provide a double example: they deal an impressive 96 DPS to everything within their short range, and a much less impressive 6 DPS to everything else. The latter effect guarantees that your combo won't break as long as you can avoid getting hit.
- Some bosses use full arena attacks, which cover the screen in an area that damages you if you stay in it for too long. However, the yellow safety bubbles are safe.
- Attack Drone: Some gifts give you helpers, which follow you around and attack automatically.
- Auto-Revive: The Second Form gift revives you if you die and lets you come back stronger.
- The Babies of the Bunch: The newborns being just brought into existence are the youngest of all the monsters in the game.
- Bad Luck Mitigation Mechanic: Special Monsters with unfinished Story Mode-only dreams have an increased chance of appearing if you accept the Garden blessing, which makes looking for these rare monsters to fulfil their dreams less time-consuming. Similarly, monsters you haven't seen yet have a greater chance of appearing in Story Mode, so you won't have to restart that many times to find that last lousy monster.
- Boss Rush/Boss Game: The focus playing as an alien girl fighting odd and freaky, but powerful cosmic monsters using The Power of Love in boss battles.
- Breakable Powerup:
- Downplayed with Glass Petal, which gives you a power boost that goes away if you get hit, but is also reset between each battle.
- Inverted with Revita Heart, Insecurity and Loneliness, power-ups whose effects are triggered when you take damage, and reset after each battle.
- Inverted with Shame and Frustration, which give you permanent bonuses after taking damage.
- Bullet Hell
- Came Back Strong: The Second Form gift is a one-time Auto-Revive that also powers you up after the revival.
- Charged Attack: Your character fires bullets automatically, but you can hold the shooting button to make her stop shooting and charge up an attack that will be fired once you let go of the button. Her Heart's and Defect's charge attacks are stronger than their regular shots in most cases, but trickier to use. The Devil's charge shot is also stronger in total, but its spread may be undesirable. Twin Heart's is pretty weak, and only useful for dealing some damage when forced to fight at a distance beyond the feather shots' Arbitrary Weapon Range. Additionally, some gifts change how this mechanic works: Paint Brush gives you access to a stronger charge attack if you charge for longer, Puncture lets you keep firing some bullets while charging, and Heartbeat greatly decreases the charge time.
- Collision Damage: Touching a boss or one of their flunkies will damage you.
- Color-Coded Elements:
- The bullets are typically color-coded according to their elements: white/glowing or colorful for Radiant, red, orange and purple for Burn, green for Toxic, yellow and blue for Zap and black or purple for Void.
- Syncron's red + bullets deal Radiant damage, while her blue - bullets deal Void damage.
- Ice bullets, which are usually light blue, deal half Radiant and half Void damage. They're used by Snowball, Frozen Veyeral and Alter Glacia.
- Gray metal bullets, used by Default and Voladrome, deal half Radiant and half Zap damage.
- Heliola's golden bullets deal half Zap and half Burn damage.
- Critical Hit: Some gifts give you critical shots, which do more damage than regular shots and leave behind critical bubbles that deal even more damage. Note that it's a definite rate, and not a chance (so a 50% rate would make exactly every other shot critical). There's also Neo World, which massively increases the Arbitrary Weapon Range of critical feather shots.
- Critical Status Buff: The Anxiety gift gives you a massive damage boost when low on health.
- Defeat Equals Explosion: In-game when the monsters are beaten in battle, they blow up,note but it doesn't kill them. The only exceptions to this are the special monsters who shine brightly before vanishing, but the proccess is still the same especially with no death.
- Defeat Equals Friendship: Through love, each playable Zaraden befriends the monsters.
- Difficult, but Awesome:
- Feather shots have a low Arbitrary Weapon Range, requiring you to stay close to the boss to deal damage, and to know when to retreat. However, if you use them well, they have excellent damage output.
- Star shots become more powerful if you minimize your movement, which requires some Bullet Hell experience and knowledge of the boss patterns.
- Auras will deal powerful Area of Effect damage if you can get close to the boss, but the range is so short that you really need to know what you're doing.
- Double Unlock:
- To unlock a monster or gift for Quickplay, or a Dreamscape for viewing, you have to first get it in a Story run, and then go to the Collection and pay some Tetrids to radiate it. Sometimes there's also an unlock condition that needs to be fulfilled before the monster/gift/dreamscape will appear, making it a triple unlock.
- Some upgrades to the Radiant Garden, Link Synapse and Solara's shop are quadruple unlocks: First you have to meet the requirement to unlock the item, which lets it show up as a gift from final encounters. Then you have to receive it. Then you have to radiate it. Then, once you have radiated enough of the relevant gift type, you can buy the upgrade for Tetrids once you see the event again.
- Character upgrades are triple unlocks, as they follow a similar sequence of steps as the event upgrades, but stop after radiating the gift.
- The game has quite a few chained unlocks whose unlock condition requires you to use something else that needs to be unlocked.
- Elemental Powers: Bullets have the five elements of Radiant, Void, Zap, Burn and Toxic. This affect how much damage the target takes from it — almost all bosses have weaknesses and resistances, and your defenses from specific elements will vary depending on your build.
- Endless Game: The game has the endless modes Endless Stress and Endless Terror.
- Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon: You can't turn your character or any helpers she may have around. As a result, if you want to shoot diagonally or backwards, you have to get a gift that lets you do so. Also, the "Inverted Unit" helpers are Fixed Backward-Facing Weapons.
- Glass Cannon: With the starting build, your character can fire a lot of bullets, but goes down in a few hits. However, you can go for a defensive build to alleviate this instead of focusing on offensive gifts and remain a Glass Cannon.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Or Aliens in this case, because the reason The Void/Totaria is attacking the protagonists is in part because of their race, the Zaraden, won't stop hating on each other, ripping off their wings and banishing them into the Void's cave.
- Improbably Female Cast: Every character is a female, even the monsters themselves if you don't believe it. While rather gnarly on the outside, as the cards states, they're all just lonely and seek friendship.
- Last Chance Hit Point: Revives instantly heal you back to 1 health if you would take a fatal hit, and are restored after each battle. There are also Stock Revives, which have the same effect, but don't regenerate after being used.
- Leitmotifs:
- The game's main theme is "Blank Melody
" which is played in the title screen and menus, and has medleys in other tracks namely "Subterranean Pulse", "Distant Observer", "Nihility", "Willpower", and "An End". - Each group of monsters has their own battle themes while some individuals have their own unique tracks:
- "The Void Rains Down Upon You" and "Alone in the Dark" for Veyerals
- "Defense Mechanism" and "Towering Anxiety" for Zaramechs
- "Her Adamant Will" and "Guardian Angel" for Guardians
- "Shambled Paradox" and "Trypophobia" for Shambles
- "Mutual Exclusion" and "Theoretically Beautiful" for Eyeric Glyphs
- "My Heart Is See Through" and "Stained Glass Battle Dance" for Glass Flora
- "Fever Dream" (Normal battles), "Impending Doom" and "Lucid Dissonance" (Both for special battles) for special monsters
- Newborn monsters' battle theme is "Monster Birthday"
- "The Void Rains Down Upon You
- The game's main theme is "Blank Melody
- Life Meter: You have a life meter, and if it runs out it's game over.
- Motifs: Besides colors, the six species of monsters each represent a negative emotion:
- Purple and loneliness for Veyerals
- Blue and anxiety for Zaramechs
- Red and frustration for Guardians
- Green and shame for Shambles
- Yellow and denial for Eyeric Glyphs
- Orange and insecurity for Glass Flora
- Mercy Invincibility: After you take damage, you are invincible for a brief period of time. The Bandage gift extends the duration of this period.
- Poison Mushroom: Subverted. Many gifts have names that make them sound like they would be bad, such as Apathy, Illness and the one literally named Poison Mushroom, but they all have positive effects.
- The Power of Love: The Zaraden girls' abilities are based on this.
- Power-Up: These are known as "Gifts" which are given by the monsters who the player has defeated. They are three types of Gifts; Power Gifts, Bonus Gifts, and Quick Gifts.
- Protagonist Title: Her Heart.
- Regenerating Health: Some gifts let you gradually regenerate health during battles, while others let you regenerate health after each battle. Notably, Defect starts out with the most powerful of the latter type.
- Samus Is a Girl: Those creepy, odd monsters that try to kill you? Yeah, every last one of them is a girl.
Word of God states that they wanted to mess with the players' expectations of masculinity and femininity. - Shout-Out: There are so many references that they have their own page.
- Single-Use Shield:
- Stock Denial Shields block one hit and then disappear. There are also Glass Hearts, a weaker counterpart that only blocks half of the damage.
- Downplayed with the usual Denial Shield: it can only block one hit each battle, but if it was used, it will be restored after the battle.
- Smart Bomb: Panics are the "bombs" in this game. You have a limited number of them, and they absorb bullets and damage enemies upon activation.
- Spread Shot: Additional hearts and Split Hearts give heart shots some spread, while feather shots and The Devil's charge shots have it automatically. While spread shots are traditionally good for stages and bad for bosses, they manage to work well in this Boss Game because many bosses have several parts that you want to damage or flunkies you want to take out, and the spread makes it easier to hit the boss at all to maintain your combo.
- Tastes Like Purple: The Flavor Text of Blue Zest has a character noting that "if blue had a flavor, this would be it".
- Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: In one of Her Heart's endings, her battle against Totaria ends with them trying to take Her Heart's heart, but when they tries to reach it, it burns them enough to give up and leave.
- Tsundere: Referenced with the "Tsundere" dream, which requires you to spend at least five minutes in battle before defeating a level 8+ monster.
- Turns Red: Many bosses will switch to harder attacks once their health reaches a certain level.
- Vanilla Unit:
- Her Heart is the only character not to have a gimmick or start out with a Power Gift beyond her shot type, which is the Boring, but Practical one. She does have more Quick Gift slots than most of the other characters, though.
- Many gifts just boost one of your stats.
- Wrap Around: The Boundless gift lets you teleport between opposite edges of the screen, and the Link Synapse does the same for your shots.
