SPACEFIGHTER - The Bullet Hell

Vampire Survivors meets bullet hell. One pilot, one ship, hundreds of enemies on screen — and by minute twelve the screen is chaos, but if you picked the right upgrades, the build is doing the work.

Build your run

Every run starts with a ship choice and an empty arsenal. As you level up, you pick from three weapon branches:

• Ballistic — fast, precise, scales with crit and pierce
• Explosive — area damage, knockback, chain detonations
• Energy — beams, lock-on, energy regen synergies

Mix branches for cross-tree synergies, or specialize for runaway scaling. No "best build" — just builds that work this run.

Bosses with real mechanics

Forget bullet-sponges. Every boss has a kit: tells, weak points, phase transitions, and patterns you'll learn the hard way before you learn them the right way. Bosses appear mid-wave — not as discrete fights but as escalations of the swarm you're already in.

Three ships, two meta layers

Start with one ship; unlock two more as you play. Between runs, two persistent systems shape your next attempt:

• Mothership hub — 6+ unlockable upgrades and new functions that change what you can do mid-run
• Rescuable crew — randomly-spawning rescue capsules let you save crew members who stay with you between runs and give the only permanent ship perks in the game. Skip a rescue at your own peril.

Random rolls every run

• Weapon and passive unlock order shifts per save — different builds available each playthrough
• Random asteroid field layouts
• Rescue capsule spawn locations
• Elite enemy spawn chance — sometimes the elite that piles onto an already-tough enemy ends up harder than the boss

Built solo

SPACEFIGHTER is a one-developer project — first Steam release. Game design, balancing, level structure, audio direction and final integration are mine. Engine is Kotlin + LibGDX (custom JVM stack), with an original synthwave / electronic soundtrack. I used a modern AI-assisted workflow (Claude Code for codebase, AI tools for a portion of visual assets) to ship this solo — full disclosure in the AI Content section below.

At a glance

• Top-down 2D bullet-heaven / survivors-like
• ~8 hours to the final boss, then freeplay opens
• Run length 5–20 min standard, 25–45 min endgame builds
• Branching upgrade trees with deep synergies
• Bosses with mechanics, not just HP
• Two-layer meta-progression
• Built solo, with transparency about tooling

Press kit: https://michal20000505-sudo.github.io/portfolio-site/gra-press.html
Contact: [email protected]

The game's interface and audio are in English only. Store page is translated for convenience.