Brood Star (stylized as BROODSTAR or BroodStar) is a self-published Vertical Scrolling Shooter game with roguelike elements. It was made by David Schmidthoffer and Mae Livingston.
The plot is fairly simple: humanity is at war with a swarm of bug-like aliens pouring out of the depths of space. To defeat them, you, an unnamed starship pilot, must breach the atmosphere of the bugs' apparent homeworld and destroy Brood Star, the swarm's guiding intelligence.
The game makes heavy use of Procedural Generation for its levels. Depending on the seed, the enemies, bosses, power-ups, and random events that you encounter in a given level will vary greatly from one run to the next.
The player can collect modules which provide various upgrades to their ship, including simple stat increases, alternate firing patterns, the ability to inflict status effects with your bullets, and much more. There is no limit to the number of modules they can obtain in a single run, though their ship can only have one primary weapon, one subweapon, and one activated skill. Each module the player collects earns them Research Points, which can be spent at the end of a run to apply permanent stat increases or unlock useful passive traits for all subsequent runs.
The game is available on Steam and the Nintendo Switch. It was released on the former platform 1 October 2020, and on the latter platform 24 June 2023.
BroodStar provides examples of:
- Abandoned Mine: The Codex describes the Caverns level as a set of manmade mines that have since been overtaken by the bugs.
- Action Bomb:
- Ticks will latch onto the player's spacecraft and begin to swell up. If they are not dislodged by dodging, the ticks will then explode for heavy damage.
- The Kamikaze Drone flies up to an enemy unit and detonates itself to deal heavy damage to them.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Beating the game unlocks different palettes and sprites for the player's ship.
- Antagonist Title: The titular Brood Star is the leader of the swarm and the game's final boss.
- Attack Drone: The player can collect various types of drones with offensive, defensive, or even utility roles. There's an achievement for having five or more drones at once.
- Bug War: Humanity's fighting against a swarm of monstrous alien bugs.
- Bullet Hell: While the early bosses have fairly simple bullet patterns, later bosses have much more complex patterns and can fire off hundreds of bullets at once.
- Charged Attack: The L.F.G. module makes enemies drop special Ammo pickups on death. each time the player collects a certain quantity of these pickups, they will automatically fire a green energy ball that slowly travels to the far end of the screen, zapping all nearby enemies for heavy damage. One shot of this weapon will likely kill every enemy on the screen.
- Close-Range Combatant: The Sword module replaces your primary ranged weapon with a spinning sword slash. The sword's blade is only slightly longer than the player's own ship, forcing them to get right up in the swarm's face.
- Cool Train: The Infested Train boss is a biomechanical locomotive many times larger than the player's spacecraft. It has multiple gun turrets with which to shoot at the player and can spawn lesser enemies to throw at them.
- Corralling Vacuum: The Gravity Drone pulls enemies toward itself and prevents them from moving away until it goes offline.
- Counter-Attack: Several modules let the player's ship automatically retaliate when they get hit, such as by spraying bullets in all directions or by calling in waves of drones to sweep across the screen from the sides.
- Cyborg: Many of the bugs have obvious mechanical augmentations, such as the Mantis Queen and her two double-barreled gun turrets. The in-game codex suggests that the bugs can assimilate human technology into themselves.
- Damage Over Time: Some modules will make your shots burn or poison enemies, making them take additional damage until these effects wear off.
- Death from Above: Falling stalactites are a frequent hazard in the Caverns and the Core. Fortunately, the player can see a crosshair that indicates where they will fall.
- Discount Card: The Cunning Linguist module gives you a discount on shop modules for the rest of the run.
- Dug Too Deep: Strongly Implied. The level descriptions found in the in-game codex suggest that humanity colonized a seemingly uninhabited planet and began to mine it extensively, only to unleash the swarm of ravenous space bugs lurking deep beneath the surface.
- Faceless Eye: The Seer is a giant eyeball monster. The Augur is the same, but covered with spikes.
- Fire-Breathing Weapon: The Flamethrower primary weapon replaces the player's shots with a continuous stream of blue-white fire. It’s very powerful, but the flames fizzle out harmlessly after traveling less than half the screen, often forcing the player to get closer to their enemies.
- Homing Projectile: Many sub-weapons will home in on the nearest enemy when fired. The Mines and the Homing Missiles are just two examples.
- Horde of Alien Locusts: The Swarm is, well, a swarm of giant alien bugs out to kill or consume anything which isn't one of them.
- Life Drain: The Black Knight module restores some of the player's shield each time they kill an enemy.
- Metal Slime: The Gold Mantis is a rare enemy with a lot of health. It won't stick around for long after it spawns, but if you can kill it before it leaves, it will drop a ton of coins.
- Money Spider: All enemies have a chance to drop coins when they die, which the player can then spend in shops to buy modules. Why random asteroids and space bugs would be carrying human currency is never addressed.
- Multi-Directional Barrage: There is a module which upgrades your primary weapon's firing pattern to a hexagonal six-way spread, letting you hit enemies beside or behind you. Other modules can give you additional weapons that fire in such a spread automatically under certain circumstances.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: One module reduces your ship's hitbox to a single pixel's width while also reducing your shield to 1. It will make you extremely hard to hit, but any shot that hits you will kill you.
- Orbiting Particle Shield:
- The Defender Drone will fly in front of the player's ship to block incoming projectiles with its metal shield.
- Generally speaking, any drone can become this if you have the module that makes drones orbit your ship: drones can soak several shots before going offline, letting them take hits on the player’s behalf.
- The Seer and the Augur can both surround themselves with a rapidly spinning ring of asteroids, the former doing so more frequently than the latter. The asteroids are destructible in both cases, though they can be replenished.
- Ouroboros: The Ouroborosect is a boss whose serpentine body encircles the battlefield. It doesn't bite down on its own tail, being too preoccupied with spitting energy bullets and laser beams at the player.
- Parrying Bullets: The Sword destroys most incoming projectiles on contact.
- Playing with Fire: While most enemies fire generic energy balls or stingers at the player, some can breathe or otherwise shoot fire. The Blaze Fly fights exclusively by spraying flames and fireballs in all directions.
- Powerful, but Inaccurate: One module greatly increases the damage of the player's shots but also widens the firing arc so that their bullets scatter along random trajectories.
- Protection Mission: The player may come across a shop which is being attacked by the bugs. The shopkeeper will ask for help and laser walls will bar the player's progress, forcing them to kill off the bugs before the bugs destroy the shop. Should the player succeed, the shopkeeper will award them some coins and let them peruse their wares.
- Red and Black and Evil All Over: "Infested" enemies have an alternating color palette of reds and grays, making them look like creatures made of bone and exposed sinew. The codex describes them as being "overcome with eldritch infestation", and they are often the most dangerous enemies of their type due to their more complex and aggressive behavior.
- Rolling Attack: Scarabs can curl up into a ball and careen toward the player's ship at high speed.
- Sequential Boss: The fight with Brood Star is split into three distinct phases across three levels. First you fight its Core, which is a Stationary Boss. Then it begins to flee, and you destroy the monster’s mammoth tail one segment at a time as you chase it out of the planet. Finally, you face the Brood Star itself in the depths of space.
- Shout-Out:
- The in-game Codex labels Mosquitron as "leader of the Deceptinsects".
- The L.F.G. module is a clear homage to the B.F.G. from Doom, firing a green sphere of energy which sends out green lightning bolts to zap nearby enemies for heavy damage as it slowly travels the length of the screen.
- Space Pirates: The player can randomly encounter a pair of "raiders" who will offer to sell them a powerful but expensive module. If the player refuses to buy the module or can't afford it, the raiders will take umbrage and attack them.
- Spike Shooter: Wasps and Yellow Jackets can shoot their own stingers at the player.
- Sprint Meter: The player's ship has a Fuel meter which depletes whenever they dodge and regenerates over time.
- Stationary Boss: Several bosses, like the Infested Train and the Chained Matriarch, remain in one spot throughout their fights. This generally does not make them any less difficult to beat than the bosses which can actually move, however.
- Underground Monkey: The player can encounter variant versions of many of the normal bosses. For example, the Infested Mantis Queen is a version of the normal Mantis Queen which swaps out the two gun turrets for an extra head.
- Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Downplayed with the Flamethrower primary weapon. It shoots a continuous stream of fire which inflicts very high damage, but unlike the other primary weapon types, its shots will fizzle out after traveling less than half the length of the screen, forcing the player to get closer to their enemies.
- Warm-Up Boss: The Mantis Queen and the Gatling Drone are two of the possible bosses that the player might fight at the end of the first level. Both bosses are straightforward: their attack patterns are simple, easy to dodge, and contain far fewer bullets than what later bosses will be shooting at the player.
- Your Soul Is Mine!: The Reaper Module allows the player to collect the souls of dead enemies, which are represented as white fireballs. Each time they collect twenty souls, they become invincible for a short time.
