Matthew BaileyLevel 99’s Bullet series is probably my most reviewed and covered franchise here on Little Board Gamers, largely because it’s hands down Jack’s favourite game of all time. He is always excited when a new set of heroines arrives on our doorstep.
With it being Fireworks Night in the UK, the new release “Bullet Paw” seemed like a perfect fit!
Just the New Stuff for People Familiar with the Series
Bullet Paw is an expansion pack that adds four new heroines, all based around cats (which immediately appealed to the boys). Unlike my review of Bullet a few months ago, these heroines are trickier and definitely feel like expansions. They’re not the first characters I would choose when teaching someone new to the game.
Beethoven is a particularly cool new heroine with quite large patterns. In the game, you typically clear three bullets at a time; however, with Beethoven’s patterns, you’re clearing four! While they look complex and require specific colours, they are actually pretty manageable. Her ability to swap two bullets on your board, as well as move bullets diagonally up or down, is particularly powerful for placement. Toby (6) really enjoyed playing as her and got quite into her mechanics.
Behemoth is the simplest heroine in this set, with 20 different cards that reference other heroines from the series. You have a wider set of patterns than usual, and all of them are fairly powerful. This makes Behemoth an excellent choice for players new to the game. If somehow Bullet Paw is the first Bullet set you try to teach someone, she’s definitely the heroine to go with!
Whimsy is a very unusual and relatively complex heroine. Instead of patterns we’re used to, you need to clear things based on a rather unconventional set of requirements. Whimsy has five different ‘thingies’: a red bullet with an odd number is a carton of milk; a blue bullet in the bottom row is a moon; a green bullet in the middle column is a dollar; a yellow bullet in the top row is the sun; and a pink bullet with an even number is a cookie (confused? I was at first!). All of her patterns require certain combinations, like having a dollar or a sun with the same number to clear three bullets in the middle row. Generally, you need two requirements of thingies to clear a specific number of bullets that aren’t necessarily related spatially to the ones you’re removing. I really enjoyed this character because she was so unusual. Having played Bullet quite a lot, it was refreshing to experience something truly different.
The final character is Eluros, which has instantly become Jack’s favourite. Eluros has moods that affect gameplay; for instance, at the start of every round, all her bullets are counted as four, meaning they’ll all go straight to the same spot at the bottom of the grid. While this sounds disastrous, her patterns are built around creating a block of two by two bullets. Her moods allow you to manipulate the game in quite a clever way. Like Whimsy, she requires a lot of thought to get to work, but Jack nailed it and made her his favourite heroine.
As with all Bullet games, there is also a cooperative mode where you can play against the characters. This mode works well and generally follows similar mechanics to the competitive game. We don’t tend to play this as much as the straight competitive version, but it is an enjoyable way to play, adding an extra puzzle element that increases the game’s value proposition.
If you enjoy the series and are looking for slightly more unusual or complex heroines, Bullet Paw is a great expansion. However, if you’re new to the series, I would recommend picking up Bullet
or Bullet
and pairing them with Bullet
, as I still think the heroines from Bullet are the best for newcomers.
I still have Bullet
sitting on my shelf, and I know we will get around to it on a rainy day just before Christmas.
Review of Bullet Overall
The Bullet series is based on the video game genre “shmups.” “Shmups” (short for “shoot-em-ups”) are games where you scroll up the screen, avoiding enemy bullets and shooting at enemies. Back in the ’80s, this was one of the main genres in the arcade. Nowadays, it remains a niche genre, still popular in Japan. These games often feature anime females and characters as part of their design. My particular favourite sub-genre is bullet hell games, which focus more on dodging patterns of enemy bullets than necessarily accurate shooting.
Bullet is a tile-clearing cascade puzzle game where each player chooses a heroine that comes with a multitude of different abilities. You start the game with an empty grid, and at the beginning, you draw a number of bullets out of a bag, starting with four; this increases each round, making things quite frantic a few rounds in. Each bullet has a number and a colour, and you need to place them in the corresponding coloured column, with the number of blank spaces down relating to the number on the bullet.
Where the gameplay comes in is that, while doing this, you can use pattern abilities to remove bullets from the grid by lining them up in specific patterns according to your character’s deck. Your character has several abilities that you can spend energy on to get the bullets to line up correctly. Clearing a starred bullet also grants you extra energy, which is really useful when you’re scrambling to clear bullets and avoid getting hit. All of this happens in real time, meaning there’s very little waiting around. The rules stipulate you do this under a fairly strict three-minute time limit. As I was playing with younger boys, we skipped the timer, but I did play a later solo game, and it definitely adds to the tension as you frantically try to arrange the bullets, scrambling to get those extra energy points so you can draw another card and hopefully clear another line.
You can use abilities and lay bullets in any order, making this a complex puzzle as you work out the best way to place the bullets and the best bullets to remove to ensure none reach the bottom of your grid. If they do, you get hit, and the last player alive wins in the competitive game. There’s also a cooperative version where you play against a character’s boss deck, working together to defeat the main boss while avoiding bullets. This is a fun variant that we’ve played a fair bit over the last few months. The boys were just as excited to play this as they were the competitive version, and the bosses often have unique mechanics that make the game different each time.
What makes Bullet unique and keeps you wanting to play again are the different heroines that offer a variety of playstyles. Interestingly, the heroines are ranked from easy to hard in terms of how easy they are to pilot. Of the three characters we played, one allowed you to hold an extra card, another gave you two sniper tokens that strongly influenced pattern play, and another started with half health but had a variety of shields and regeneration mechanisms. As soon as we finished, the boys were eager to play again with a different heroine!
All three of us absolutely loved this. While I admit I was drawn in by the theme, the boys equally thought it was excellent. The right mix of thinking and the tension of scrambling to clear more bullets is something I haven’t felt playing games in a while. There aren’t many other games like this; it reminds me of playing something like Tetris or Lumines.
This gets a very strong recommendation from me. Its solo mode is also extremely good and something I plan to invest more time in. Plus, the boys are eager for even more heroines, and we await the arrival of the extra Kickstarter heroines with bated breath. Time to unleash the two promo ones the next time we play!
“Bullet” was kindly provided by Level 99 Games for the purpose of review. Crystal Tsui, who workLevel 99’s “Bullet” series is probably my most reviewed and covered franchise here on Little Board Gamers, largely because it’s hands down Jack’s favourite game of all time, and he is always excited when a new set of heroines turns up on our doorstep.
“Bullet” was kindly provided by “Level 99 Games” for the purpose of review. Crystal Tsui, who works for Level 99 Games, is in our community, and I consider her a friend. Our thoughts and opinions are however our own.
