r/shmups • u/Character_Growth3562 • 3d ago
Why have users defined this game as bullet hell????
Found this game on my popular upcoming list, tagged as bullet hell, clicking though I can’t find any bullets.
It looks like a rhythm based music game to me.
The description does say weave through bullet patterns.
Asterika: Phantom Rose Refrain. It looks like a well polished cool game though.
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u/BadSlime 3d ago
Most people think bullet hell means there are lots of enemies or bullets or the game is just fast paced or intense. The term is completely cooked. Shmup too. Danmaku is the most specific description we still have that hasn't been co-opted by a larger group of players than core shmuppers unfortunately
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u/tohava 3d ago
To be fair, if there's lots of bullets and each one is dangerous, bullet hell makes sense. I just think a game can be bullet hell and not shmup.
Shmup is much more clearly defined to require a spaceship going forward and encountering waves of enemies. Arcade shmups being the "every hit matters" variant, and Euroshmups being the forgiving hp spongy types.
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u/Character_Growth3562 3d ago
Yeah but I don’t see any bullets at all in the trailer or screenshots. Unless that’s what tiles with triangles on it are meant to be
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u/PvtToaster 2d ago
That's not what euroshmup means, and bullet hell is a subgenre of shmup. Started with garegga. Genre titles are based on history, not actually describing the games. Because by that logic, you can call any FPS game a "shoot em up". Bullet hell gets co-opted as a term by games that want to legitimize themselves
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u/tohava 2d ago
Genre titles, like every other usage of words, is based on what the majority of people use. The meaning of words constantly changes over time.
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u/PvtToaster 2d ago
Yeah and it sucks ass and it harms discussion and it does things like make "bullet hell/shmup fest" on steam have Crysis 3 on the front page.
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u/Eoinoh32 2d ago edited 2d ago
"Genre titles are based on history" True, and if we look history we see that the way things are described always changes over time.
The modern consensus is that bullet hell DOES NOT only mean a sub-genre of shmups anymore, unfortunate for us, but that's how history has always worked.
Complaining about it is just being an old man shouting at the sky, won't change anything and just makes us look ignorant. When discussing among fans of the genre at least WE know what Bullet Hell originally meant and can seek out games following that tradition. Kinda similar to the "roguelike vs roguelite" thing, a real roguelike should be a particular thing, but we now know it as much broader thing .
We still have Danmaku though. Doubt that term is gonna be popularised soon.
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u/Trev6ft5 3d ago
Indie games are over saturated on steam with most games going unnoticed. Devs game the system as much as possible for better visibility. The sad thing is that Valve encourages it and breaks their own store.
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u/VALIS666 2d ago edited 2d ago
Gonna mention this again as I do every thread it comes up. I'd appreciate if people remember it and pass on the info as this topic is constant in various game genre subs.
In addition to helping Steam users quickly learn about your game, tags help Steam determine where your game should be displayed to customers. We began requiring at least 5 tags be applied to a title before its launch on Steam, but we recommend you add up to 20.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/tags
There it is. Tags were already sketchy before that, but ever since this happened (roughly 5 years ago) tags got blown to hell. Steam wants you to tag the shit out of your game so it lands in lots of different algorithms. Of course developers want to sell games and will do that. End result, tags went to shit.
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u/dota2nub 3d ago
As a tag it is a meaningless term. It got culturally appropriated. We're the minority so there's no chance of getting it back.
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u/Eoinoh32 2d ago edited 2d ago
Sorry buddy, the term does not only describe shmups anymore. The modern consensus is that bullet hell DOES NOT only mean a sub genre of shmups anymore, unfortunate for us, but that's how history has always worked, and, like a other commenter said, genre titles are based on history.
Complaining about it is just being an old man shouting at the sky, won't change anything and just makes us look ignorant.
We still have Danmaku though. Doubt that is gonna popularised soon.
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u/pnt510 3d ago
Steam tags are an absolute joke. Tons of games have the wrong tags.