Hello! I spent most of the last month polishing Hyper Bun Buster’s arcade mode stages and adding a campaign mode to the game, but more importantly…

Hyper Bun Buster’s demo is out now on Steam!

Steam Next Fest is this week, and the Hyper Bun Buster demo is playable!

Hyper Bun Buster: Rocket Hammer Action on Steam

Take control of Tess, a bunny girl who uses her huge hammer to send enemies flying into other enemies in this top-down bump combat action game! Dodge projectiles, control space and outmaneuver bosses in Arcade mode or explore dungeons, solve puzzles and unlock abilities in Adventure mode.

It’s the same demo that has already been playable for a while over on itch.io, but if you prefer playing games on Steam, the option is now there.

Speaking of Steam Next Fest, please let me know if you’ve played any other demos this week that you think I might like! The only other demo I’ve tried so far is Lurruna, which I had a great time with and highly recommend to anyone interested in games like Ghosts on Goblins or classic Castlevania. Surely there are some other fun demos out there that I’m missing out on…

Raft riding

At this point in Hyper Bun Buster’s development, most of my time is going into cleaning up and finishing everything that I’ve already put into the game. Quite a few of arcade mode’s stages currently feel more like a second draft than a finished stage, so I’ve been polishing them all up.

One of those stages is the swamp stage, which I love. Lots of its challenge comes from one specific room halfway through the stage, where several waves of frogs and cats jump out of the water and try to surround you as the room itself gets thinner and thinner.

It’s arguably the most difficult setpiece in the entire game other than the final stage, and I wanted it to feel appropriately special. So I made it into a raft:

I love this thing! And now if anyone thinks this room is really difficult, at least the extra effort I put into its presentation will let them know that I made it this way on purpose.

I don’t want to show off the rest of the swamp stage yet, but I’m really happy with how it plays now. The main change I made, which seems to be a pattern among the level design changes I’ve made recently, is that I’m adding a bit more variety to the room design via terrain (e.g. uniquely shaped corridors) or powerups (e.g. the double damage powerup). Previously I was mostly relying on different enemy compositions for all of the variety, mostly just because that’s how I did things on my game Chessplosion.

Adding more variety via terrain or powerups has been useful for all the stages I’m working on, but it’s especially useful for the swamp stage. Most of the swamp is based around fighting frog enemies, which are already so strong by themselves that you can’t really mix them with too many other enemies before the encounter becomes impossible. But I think I’ve still managed to add enough variety regardless.

I’ve been doing a lot of work on the other remaining stages too, but they’re not quite ready to show off yet!

Campaign mode

Hyper Bun Buster's arcade mode used to let you continue from the start of your current stage after a game over, but you couldn't save your progress partway through a run. So if you were playing through the game for the first time and you spent hours and hours getting to the final stage, you would have to replay the game from the start the next time you opened it.

This continue system felt like a bit of a strange compromise. Allowing continues at all wasn't hardcore enough for an actual arcade mode with online leaderboards, but not letting people save their progress felt a bit too harsh for the players who wanted to play through the game one stage at a time.

So I split the old arcade mode into two modes: a new arcade mode with online leaderboards and no continues, and a new "campaign mode" that lets you play through arcade mode one stage at a time. Campaign mode uses the old stage select menu, except now you can choose from multiple save slots and you can unlock new challenges in challenge mode as you play through the game. You can also jump straight into practice mode from the campaign stage select menu, and return right back to where you were after you finish practising whichever room was giving you trouble:

Thanks to the new save slot menu it feels much more like a “normal” campaign-based single player console game, instead of an arcade game with a stage select menu:

But if you’re not interested in any of that and you would prefer to just use campaign mode as a glorified arcade stage select menu, that works too. There’s an Unlock Everything option in the game’s options menu, which lets you play any stage in any order you want. So if you want to compete on an individual stage's online leaderboard without having to play through the rest of campaign mode, or if you've just installed the game on your friend’s PC and you want to force them to attempt the swamp stage right away, you can do that.

Anything else?

I finally got a one credit clear of the arcade game Funky Jet! I recorded commentary over my gameplay footage and I had a lot to say about the game. In short, although various aspects of the game's pacing and difficulty bug me, the player character's moveset is so fun to play with that it single-handedly makes up for everything else. There should be more games about flying around with a jetpack while punching people into other people.

I also recorded a commentated one credit clear of Hop Top, an indie game from a 2024! I got a decent high score in endless mode and played arcade mode too. Hop Top was designed to look and feel like a mid-90s arcade remake of an early 80s arcade game (like Pac-Man Arrangement and Tank Force) and I'm shocked at how well it pulled this off. If someone had told me that this was a genuine 90s arcade game, I would have believed them. It's available on Steam now and it's one of the best modern arcade-style games I have played in a very long time, so give it a try if it looks like your sort of thing!

Mina the Hollower is out now! I was a programmer on the game back in 2020-2021 while I was making my game Chessplosion. I didn't do any game design on Mina the Hollower so it doesn't feel much like my solo-developed games, but if you're already playing it you can now enjoy the knowledge that my code is in there somewhere.

Shmup Slam 8 is this weekend! It's kind of like GDQ and other speedrun marathons, except it's in an arcade and it's all about playing shmups. Lots of the games here are extremely difficult or volatile, so I can't wait to see people try and play them under pressure. I'm especially looking forward to the runs of Strikers 1999, Ketsui, Vacant Ark, RayStorm, Caramel Action Micro, Hazelnut Hex, DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou and DoDonPachi (original). I'm looking forward to catching the event stream this weekend, then watching the rest of the VODs next week.

That’s all I’ve been up to recently. I hope you have fun with the Hyper Bun Buster demo and I’ll see you next time!