PAX West Spotlight: Bite the Bullet
Imagine playing Contra, but as a zombie. Or Left 4 Dead, but you're the zombies, have a gun, are playing in a 2D side-scroller environment, and eat your enemies for powers and upgrades. Actually... just think Contra as a zombie.
Bite the Bullet is a 2D side-scroller set in a post apocalyptic world where ghouls have risen up due to some unknown plague. You have been hired by the government to exterminate them. The government (which is always the good guys when referred to as "the government") is unaware of one important fact - that you are also a ghoul.
In terms of gameplay, your ghoulish nature adds a few interesting features. First, every once in a while you can channel Dante from Devil May Cry and go full ghoul mode, complete with more health and better melee murdering. Secondly, you can eat your enemies. Once enemies drop below a certain health level, the player can devour them to gain some upgrade points as well as a small chunk of health.
But if the game was just eating enemies, then I would have called it Kirby with guns. In Bite the Bullet, your upgrade paths also include three class trees - carnivore, herbivore, and robovore. While a carnivore can eat plant enemies, it gets less nutrition from them. Eat too many enemies of the wrong class, and your zombie will throw up, losing all of its stored precious nutrients.
Bite the Bullet is a fun idea that is currently in its alpha release. The developers want to make sure certain elements are fine-tuned (such as the dash which has a long reset time but is also needed for platforming challenges). But overall, Bite the Bullet is a fun idea that has a lot of potential.
Check out the trailer below:
