Ballet of Steel
News:
- Thank you all for the kind words on the game and we've heard you voices. We we currently working on remaking this game to a fully fledged roguelike game. Expanding this little prototype with more content, polish and quality of life fixes. More details on that soon.
- Our musician has uploaded the soundtrack to bandcamp, go check them out! https://lapspider45.bandcamp.com/album/ballet-of-steel
Overview:
Play as a ballet dancer with incredible reflex, who can see bullets coming and swiftly swat them back, using the enemies weapons against them. With an unknown motive, she dives deep into the ruins of what was once a bustling metropolis, to find answers...
This is an atmospheric turn-based bullet hell game prototype inspired by games such as Enter The Chronosphere, Ultrakill, Radio the Universe and TWWWR. Fight your way through 9 floors full of mechanical foes in a dying world.
The current build of the game is considered to be a prototype of the core mechanics we wanted to make for our take on mixing the bullet dodging action from bullet hell games and the strategy thinking from turned based rougelikes. This was made as a submission for the Bullet Hell Game Jam 5. We will be continuing to expand this concept into a full fledged game in the future (not very soon tho).
Controls:
| Move | Left click on highlighted tiles |
| Throw knife | Right click on enemy |
| Skip turn | Spacebar / Shift / Left click on middle tile |
| Restart game (WARNING) | R |
| Exit game | Alt+F4, ESC |
How to Play:
- Defeat all the enemies in the room in order to progress.
- On your turn, move into bullets to parry them. On the enemy turn, bullets that move into you will hurt you.
- You will lose 1 health from taking damage during a turn. If you lose all your health then it's game over. Keep in mind that there is no way to recover health in the game.
- Your hitbox is slightly smaller than the tile you are standing on.
- Parry enough bullets, and you will gain a knife. It is a powerful weapon that can be thrown using right click to inflict heavy damage and stagger. It also clears all bullets in its path. Knowing when to use your knives is key to mastering the game.
Current Know Issues
- If you press Alt+TAB or change to a different browser tab, the music will permanently stop as punishment for your lack of focus. The reasons for which are detailed here.
Credits:
Iced_Lemon - Programming, Game Design
Lapspider45 - Music Composition, Sound Design
Zahran - Sprite Art, Graphic Design
KingW - Illustration
sorasu - Sound Design
Get the Soundtrack here:
https://lapspider45.bandcamp.com/album/ballet-of-steel
Download
Install instructions
Unzip before running
Comments
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nice game, i hope to play more
Cool game
Really solid demo, I can't wait to see what you do with this fun mechanic in a full game!
Very fun. Love the art style, hoping to see more. Perhaps a longer move range and bigger arenas with more enemies could be fun? Hard to tell but it's worth fiddling with.
天才般的设计
Awesome gamee love the music , beat it first try
Quite a pleasant time, and the world needs more turn-based games... We all get old, eventually. Your game has been unexpectedly, and perhaps oddly even, entertaining.
Keep it up! Good job Game Developer Iced_Lemon!
this is so awesome! it would be really cool if you could make it a rougelike with random items every floor
I absolutely adore this take on a bullet-hell, the concept is great and id love to see more, especially if we get some lore/story ^^
this is something I need in life
Balls of Steel
linux approved using wine
---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS
---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't
---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf
---{ Audience }---
☑ Kids
☑ Teens
☐ Adults
☐ Grandma
---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☑ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☑ Old Fashioned
☐ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data
---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☑ Easy
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{ Grind }---
☑ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding
---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☑ Some lore
☐ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life
---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☑ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond
---{ Price }---
☑ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☐ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money
---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☑ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10
---{ Author }---
☑ https://vojtastruhar.github.io/steam-review-template
The last picture you get after completing(?) the game almost felt like a jumpscare with how focused on the game I was. Also great art! Altough I couldn't really tell if the game ended on that picture, mb some kind of "The End" thing around there somewhere would be helpful.
love it!
nice co-.... I mean nice game
Great mechanics! Also great for a quick pickup if you have 30 mins (until it gets further expanded of course).
awesome game!
Awesome game. Nice touch on non-rythmic rythm-game of bullet hell. Didn't expect that many different enemies! Hope for sequel (or prequel?)
this is awesome!!
Super fun!!! Immense design, every level is such a fun puzzle. Need more pronto, I adore it!
awesome game i love it
I thought the title said "Balls of steel"
This is a wonderful game!! I adore the movement, the combat system and the character are so unique! The only issue I take with it is the text - it's rather small, and quite crowded. It makes it difficult to scan through, since it's so wordy. I had to go into the game page controls to figure out how to throw knives!
But the game itself? Stunning and so incredibly satisfying to play!
This game is great so far. The only thing I would change is the music. It can play pretty inconsistently at times. Also, bosses would be a fantastic addition.
Super fun game and really interesting take on bullet hells. I really like the visual style as well, the palette is very pleasing and the animations are sooo smooth.
Big fan of your work Emlise. Thank you for playing, and for giving us so many inspiring games!
Really nice game, thank you for making it! Looking forward to your future development on it :)
Beat first try with 13 health. Pretty good game
great, but ez. wanna harder version
that's one way of solving zeno's paradox
great game!!!
too ez
is great tho
Great game, but it's quite easy right now. Maybe you could implement bullets that can't be parried?
Very interesting gameplay. Impressive pixel art. Very well executed. One issue I noticed is that sometimes I don't know if a bullet is gonna hit me or not, maybe try add some UI indicators to tell the direction and the distance a bullet can travel?
Reminds me of Celeste. Everyone's dead.
pretty good
Art
An overall really fun game and interresting mechanics :)
fun