Video Game / Bullet Hell Monday

Why don't we play a bullet hell shooter? I made it for you who think bullet hell shooters are hard.

"Bullet Hell Monday" is a bullet hell shooter game that’s fun for beginners too. Let's start with a simple stage and gradually get used to bullet hell.

Bullet Hell Monday, or Danmaku Getsuyōbi (弾幕月曜日) in Japanese, is a series of Vertical-Scrolling Shooters by Masayuki Ito, originally developed for i(Pad)OS and Android mobile devices, before later being released on Steam for play on Windows PC and Steam Deck.

Bullet Hell Monday

The first game in the series, released in 2016 for mobile devices and then on September 10, 2022^note or September 9, depending on timezone on Steam. This game features three distinct modes: Chapter, Challenge, and Extra.

In Chapter Mode, players start off with a weak ship and must progress through a series of short stages to earn points to upgrade their ship. However, completing a stage itself will not unlock the next; the player must fulfill objectives (such as "destroy x enemies", "collect y items", or "destroy z enemies with bombs") to reach 100 Mission Points to unlock the next stage.

Challenge Mode is more akin to arcade-style shmups. The player has a fully-upgraded ship and faces off in five different stages; the player may either play each stage individually, or play all of them in sequence.

Extra Mode is an endless mode where the player fights enemy waves that increase in difficulty until the player dies.

Bullet Hell Monday: Black / Danmaku Getsuyōbi Kuro (弾幕月曜日黒)

The second game in the series, released in 2019 for mobile and on April 24, 2023^note or April 23, depending on timezone for Steam.

This game eschews the original game's Chapter Mode, focusing instead on arcade-style gameplay similar to the original's Challenge Mode. In addition to the original five stages from the first game, this game introduces the "Black" set of five additional stages.

Only four weapon types are available in this game as opposed to the original's nine, although two more of the weapon types from the original game are available in the Steam version. However, this game also features six SP weapons, which are available to all weapon types and operate on cooldown gauges, with two of the SP abilities being based on two of the weapon types in the first game.

The Steam version of the game additionally brings back Extra Mode after it was absent from the mobile original.

Bullet Hell Monday: Finale / Danmaku Getsuyōbi Shūshō (弾幕月曜日終章)

The third and final game in the series, released in 2020 for mobile and on September 3, 2023 for Steam. The mobile release features optional Microtransactions to expedite ship upgrades, but the Steam version is completely free of charge.

This game goes back to the Chapter-based roots of the first game, with the stages being based on the ones from Black, and brings back two of the weapon types from the first game. This time, completing a stage within a chapter unlocks the next stage regardless of Mission Points, with the exception of the boss stage at the end of each chapter which requires 1000 Mission Points combined from the previous nine stages.

Extra Mode from the first game is brought back as well.

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Compare Danmaku Unlimited, another series of bullet hell shooters with both mobile and PC versions.

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The Bullet Hell Monday series provides examples of:

• Arrange Mode: The Original stage set in Black effectively serves as this to the Challenge stages in the original game; it's the same stages but with Black's mechanics such as SP abilities and the bomb item gauge. It does not feature the True Final Boss from the first game's Steam port, however.
• Bittersweet Ending: Completing an all-stages run of Black's Black or Black IF stages ends with not only the True Final Boss being destroyed, but also the player's ship while a Lonely Piano Piece plays.
• Boring, but Practical: Laser and Wide may not be the flashiest or coolest-feeling weapons, but equipping both in a stage is rarely ever an ineffective choice. Laser inflicts high DPS against single targets, while Wide is a Spread Shot that is great at destroying large swaths of enemies.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory:
  • In the original game, one of the in-app purchases unlocks all Challenge stages and fully upgrades all of your purchased ships. Averted in the Steam release; there is no option to pay for instant-unlock.
  • In the mobile version of Finale, you can spend real-world money instead of AP to immediately unlock new weapon types or fully upgrade them. Averted in the Steam release, which is a completely Freeware Game, although this does mean you cannot expedite your upgrades and have to earn them.
• Bullet Hell: Like the title implies, the game rains down hundreds of bullets upon the player, with bullet densities becoming quite unreal at the higher difficulty levels.
• Bullet Time: The Time weapon's bomb slows down enemies and their bullets for a few seconds. In the sequels, this ability is made into an SP ability that is available to all weapons.
• Cap: The maximum multiplier is 9,999.9%, which can be gained on certain stages, or more easily in Extra stages should one survive long enough.
• Close-Range Combatant: In the original game, the Blade weapon has a very short range, but it has absurd DPS that can tear even the most armored of enemies a new one.
• Common HTTP Status Code: In the original game's Steam port, after beating the Final Boss on Normal or higher, the game freezes, and then flashes an "ERROR — CODE: BHM403" message, as in a "403 Forbidden — You don't have permission to access this asset", before summoning the True Final Boss. Additionally, point-based extra lives are disabled for this fight, represented by the "points until next extend" gadget being replaced with "BHM 503 EXTEND UNAVAILABLE", as in "503 Unavailable — the service is unavailable at this time."
• Deadly Walls: Some stages, most notably Stage/Chapter 3 in all games, feature blocks as part of the environment and which are indestructible and don't shoot. Touching them has the same effect as touching a bullet, although using Spark in Black and Finale lets you safely pass through them.
• Difficulty by Acceleration: In Extra mode in the original game, Finale, and the Steam version of Black, Accel stages make the game increase speed as you collect point items. Not just enemy and bullet speed, the entire game speeds up. Burst does the same as well (with the added gimmick of making your SP gauges recharge faster). However, the game speed will slowly decay back to 100% when not collecting items.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The first game, in addition to not having SP abilties, uniquely has Decoy (called "Phantom" in this game), Time, and Blade as separate weapons. These three weapons would be changed to SP abilities in the next two games. The interface also looks different, using standard fonts in more places, rather than the dedicated font used in later games or even this game's own Steam port.
• Embedded Precursor: Black features the five Challenge stages from the original game, but with Black's mechanics. However, despite the Steam version of the original game featuring a True Final Boss at the end of those stages, the port of Black to the same platform does not have it.
• Endless Game: Each game, except for the mobile version of Black, has Extra mode, which has a series of stages that keep going indefinitely until you die. There are several stages available, with gimmicks such as accelerating bullet speeds or faster SP gauge gain.
• Every 10,000 Points:
  • In Challenge Mode of the original game and in Black, you gain an extra life every set number of points. The exact amount depends on whether you're playing the mobile or Steam version in the original game, and the difficulty in Black (the higher the difficulty, the more points needed). In the orignal game's Steam version, extra lives are disabled during the True Final Boss fight — "BHM 503 EXTEND UNAVAILABLE".
  • In Black, you gain an extra bomb at every 1,000% multiplier.
• Flawless Victory: The game tracks no-damage, no-bomb, and no-damage-no-bomb badges for each stage. These are tracked independently of high scores, so you don't have to accomplish your no-damage-no-bomb run in the same run as a new high score.
• Genre Shift: Not the games, but rather their soundtracks. Whereas the original game's soundtrack is mainly trance, Black's soundtrack (which consists of remixes of the original game's tracks), as well as the True Chapter 5 theme in Finale, is instead Eurobeat.
• Golden Ending: In the PC version of Black. After defeating the True Final Boss of IF mode, it seems as if your ship is going to be destroyed just like in Black mode's ending...but then it shifts off the bottom of the screen before zooming back upwards as the screen fades to white to the tune of the triumphant True Chapter 5 theme, as if you survived this time.
• Hard Mode Filler: In Finale, after completing the first five Chapters, you unlock True Chapters. They are basically Chapters 1-5 all over again, but locked to Heaven difficulty. Instead of stage-specific objectives, most of them have the same few objectives: clear the stage, clear the stage without dying, clear the stage without bombs, clear the stage without bombs or dying, and clear the stage with a 100% destruction rate.
• Harder Than Hard: The difficulties in the original and Black go Easy, Normal, Hard, and Heaven. Heaven not only has denser and faster enemy bullets, but midbosses and bosses may gain new forms. For example, the midboss of stage Black 1 has two forms on Easy and Normal. On Heaven, it has four. While Finale features Heaven difficulty too, it's subverted in that Hard is absent. The Steam version of Black does a similar thing with the IF stages; only Normal and Heaven are available.
• Homing Projectile:
  • The Search weapon makes your shots automatically target enemies. However, what your ship decides to target may not necessarily what you want or need to shoot.
  • The Homing weapon fires homing missiles that create lingering explosions on impact when they reach their targets.
  • The Lock-On weapon features a series of pods that fly up to enemies to shoot them, as well as a stream of auto-targeting shots straight from your ship.
  • In Black and Finale, Homing Laser is an SP attack that fires a burst of Homing Lasers at enemies when you switch from your second weapon back to your first one with the Homing Laser gauge full.
• Limited Loadout: In Black, you have all six SP abilities equipped at once. In Finale, you can only equip four SP abilities: two multitouch-gesture SP abilities (two of the following: Spark, Decoy, Time, Barrier) and the two weapon-change SP abilities (Blade and Homing Laser).
• Long Song, Short Scene: The original game's Challenge mode Stage 5 lasts about 30 seconds before sending the Final Boss after you. However, the full stage theme is 1 minute and 22 seconds long (still pretty short, but it's almost three times longer than what you can hear of it).
• No Plot? No Problem!: There is never any backstory for why you're flying around blowing up enemies that, in turn, release huge masses of bullets.
• Recycled Soundtrack: The True Chapter 5 theme from Finale is reused in Black IF Stage 5 in the Steam version of Black, rather than doing a Title Theme Drop like in Black Stage 5.
• Score Multiplier: Destroying enemies adds to your multiplier, with the multiplier gain being higher the stronger the enemy is and the faster you kill it. Your multiplier mainly factors into how much the score items are worth. There's also a Score Multiplier Multiplier: Destroying enemies with a bomb or the Blade or Homing Laser SP abilities awards double the multiplier gain, destroying enemies while Spark is active awards 1.5 times the multiplier gain, and destroying enemies with a bomb, Blade, or Homing Laser while Spark is active awards triple.
• Single-Use Shield:
  • If Auto-Bomb is enabled, then if you get hit with bombs in stock, you'll automatically bomb at the cost of all of your bombs.
  • The Shielding weapon's bomb creates a barrier that protects your ship for one hit. The barrier persists until either you get hit or the stage ends, even if you later switch weapons. Starting a level out with Shielding will also spawn a shield from the get-go (though in Chapter mode in the original game and Finale, this ability needs to be unlocked first).
• Smart Bomb: Pressing the bomb button deploys a powerful attack, with the effect varying based on what weapon you're currently using, while also briefly making you invincible. For example, Laser bomb fires a Wave-Motion Gun in front of you, Wide bomb creates a circular blast in front of your ship, and Time bomb slows down enemies and bullets. Enemies destroyed while your bomb is active give twice the multiplier increment, and bullets caught in the bomb will be cancelled and converted to point items, so the player is encouraged to use bombs offensively just as much as defensively.
• Stealth Sequel: Finale, despite its title, is implied to be an Interquel between the original game and Black (for what little plot the games have); True Chapter 5 is called "Advance to the Black".
• Super Mode: In Black and Finale, Spark is an SP ability that temporarily boosts your shot power and multiplier gain.
• Timed Mission: Certain Chapter stages in Finale, most notably in Chapter 5 with the "Defeat enemies quickly!" prompt, have an Optional Boss that only appears if you defeat enough enemies within an on-screen time limit. If the timer runs out, the stage ends without the boss appearing, which is counted as a clear but will deprive you of large amounts of AP and Mission Points.
• True Final Boss: The Steam port of the original game and Black feature one last boss fight at the end of an all-stages run (i.e. it will not appear if you just play Stage 5 by itself), all set to Sad Battle Music as the sound effects cut out. In the original game, your multiplier is reset back to 0% and you have to gain it back, extra lives are locked out, and the boss does not have a healthbar — you have to hold out until it self-destructs. In Black, your SP abilities' gauges are greatly boosted.
• Updated Re-release: The Steam version of the original game not only adds a True Final Boss in Challenge Mode, it also updates the UI style to match that of Black and Finale.
• Version-Exclusive Content:
  • The Steam version of the Original game adds a True Final Boss at the end of a Challenge all-stages run.
  • The Steam version of Black adds the Search and Homing weapons and Extra Mode, which are not present in the mobile version. Completing all five Black stages unlocks "IF" stages, remixed versions of those five stages.
• Violation of Common Sense:
  • Dying and respawning adds to your bomb stock (if the relevant upgrade has been purchased in Chapter modes, and in Challenge in the original and in Black by default) up to a cap of 5 bombs, so for scoring purposes, it may be more advantageous to die to get more bombs at times.
  • Auto-Bomb mode fires a bomb for you if you get hit, at the cost of all of your bombs. However, an auto-bomb at one bomb left doesn't take any additional bombs, and furthermore in Black, auto-bomb also activates a free Spark (with the multiplier bonus that entails), Homing Laser, and Blade, which can be used in lieu of a proper Spark bomb if your Spark gauge is not ready yet.

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