No way to recover health?

[vortex]

Without a way to recover the health, the game stops being about high speed gunplay and starts being about inching clowly forward and clearing a few enemies at a time so you can minimize damage.

[Squire Grooktook]

Originally posted by vortex:

Without a way to recover the health, the game stops being about high speed gunplay and starts being about inching clowly forward and clearing a few enemies at a time so you can minimize damage.

Not really. Later stages feature constant barrages of randomly spawning enemies, so you're more and more likely to take damage the longer you stay in any particular place. Compounding this, the last few stages have unique traps that make it pretty much impossible to survive without constantly moving.

That being said, I agree that not giving extends during arcade mode is kind of a weird design choice. Not a deal breaker, but I would have rather had smaller starting life but the potential to make up for some mistakes in arcade mode.

[tricosahedron]

You often need to push forward in order to maintain your rank, which gives you more points and allows you to use the White (weapon) efficiently.

On the other hand, there are some spots where it's the opposite, and you're rewarded for stopping and farming enemies until you have an S-rank, e.g. before midboss 1, or before bosses 5 & 6.

[sitebender]

Nah just die and respawn at the last screen change.

[Mr. Jizzard The Tentacle Wizard]

Originally posted by Squire Grooktook:

Originally posted by vortex:

Without a way to recover the health, the game stops being about high speed gunplay and starts being about inching clowly forward and clearing a few enemies at a time so you can minimize damage.

Not really. Later stages feature constant barrages of randomly spawning enemies, so you're more and more likely to take damage the longer you stay in any particular place. Compounding this, the last few stages have unique traps that make it pretty much impossible to survive without constantly moving.

That being said, I agree that not giving extends during arcade mode is kind of a weird design choice. Not a deal breaker, but I would have rather had smaller starting life but the potential to make up for some mistakes in arcade mode.

But tons of enemies attacking you at once will make you take even more damage, making health kits even more necessary. It's my opinion they really should add hp packs to the game in a patch or something.

[Kristy Blackclaw]

Need a sunday powerup.

[HughManatee]

You just haven't learned how to manage the slomo yet. You can clear every stage without ever taking damage, which is why health pickups are not required.
Also, aside from the Dragon stage, story mode is pretty easy on all difficulties thanks to unlimited continues.

[HughManatee]

Originally posted by holychair:

Every bullet hell shmup has that, even those that have a slomo feature as well.

False. I suggest you play more shmups.

[tricosahedron]

Looks like Bleed 2 might handle that differently: If you look at the animated gifs here[www.bootdiskrevolution.com], you see that Wryn has 6 blocks of health, and loses a whole block each time she's hit.

There's no way to say how the final version will be, but as it looks now, there'll probably be either a way to gain extra lives, a way to recover health, or the game will be a lot more hardcore than its predecessor.

Edit: Maybe I'm reading too much into it, and it's only for testing purposes

[BDR]

Good eye! Everything does indeed do one block of health at the moment, but it's only for testing purposes. The game hasn't been balanced for difficulty or anything yet. Still a long ways to go. :)

I think, at the very least, arcade mode in Bleed 2 will have a health refill in each stage, but it'll be a bit out of the way or will add a couple seconds to the clock, so you'll have to waste a little time getting it... something like that!

[Mr. Jizzard The Tentacle Wizard]

I see, becasue in the origional bleed you can buy hp upgrades in the store, so even if theres no health packs you would have more hp to begin with.

This one would need hp packs because you only have a set 6 blocks of hp.

[BDR]

I agree! Plus it's going to be longer than Bleed 1... and someone pointed out to me that after a certain length, it won't be fair to expect the average Joe to beat the whole thing on one life. :P

[HughManatee]

I feel like "average Joe" isn't actually a member of this game's target audience.

[BDR]

You might be right about that... but I don't think it would hurt the game, would it? Especially if the pickups were out of the way, and obviously penalized people who care about things like leaderboard times or high scores? They might not even appear on higher difficulties.

I love games like this, but I wasn't always good at them. I'd like to make it enjoyable for the less-experienced if I can! But, things like arcade mode are still a ways off, so I'm open to hearing peoples' ideas in the meantime!

[Kristy Blackclaw]

can't wait to see bleed 2

[Bob of Mage]

While playing the story I found that the unlimited retries allowed me to learn how to play the game. I would play on the lower settings and keep retrying until I made progress. At first I barely understood the slowmo and had never really played any game like this one (most of the games I play are more slow paced, and use far different controls like RTSes). The unlimited retries and checkpoints (nothing leads to raging more then having to redo a bunch of hard areas after failing just one) allowed me to learn the ropes and get good, or at least good enough to enjoy it and not die all the time. The arcade mode was the only part where healing even felt remotely needed. I could never finsh it even on easy.