Super what?
Allow me to introduce Super Bullet Break by developer BeXide. The elevator pitch--"anime Slay the Spire"--makes for a very short elevator ride. "Deckbuilder where practically every card is also a girl, who is also a bullet, which you literally shoot at enemies" then could make the other person worry that they're trapped in an enclosed space with you. But not me. I was fascinated.
Super Bullet Break is a roguelike deckbuilder that not only takes inspiration from the (sub)genre-defining Slay the Spire but outright cribs large parts of its gameplay and structure along with it: a few moments of gameplay of both Spire and SBB should make the close resemblance immediately apparent. Simple branching maps with enemies, events, and rest stops; turn-based combat centered around card costs and planning ahead of enemy intents; the general structure of most runs consisting of three "Acts" capped with a boss at the end of each. In as non-derogatory of a way as I can say it, Super Bullet Break is a Slay the Spire clone on many levels. And, as a burgeoning fan of Slay the Spire and a long-time anime fan, I was definitely in the target market for this game.
As I spend an ever-increasing amount of time with both Slay the Spire and Super Bullet Break, what fascinates me the most is just how different they really are. There are even a few instances where I like the SBB approach more than in Spire. Outrage? Heresy? Just hear me out.
But first some history, because the story behind Super Bullet Break--its second life after its first stint as a pinball/Breakout-style gacha game--just has to be told.
From the ashes of Bullet Break
Even if you might not recognize the name, Super Bullet Break's developer, BeXide Inc.--pronounced like the word "beside" (株式会社 ビサイド)--is quite prolific. It was (and remains to this day) the force behind the Doko Demo Issyo franchise closely tied to the promotion of Sony consoles. If you've ever seen the 3D stylized white cat named Toro, that de facto PlayStation mascot came from BeXide!
Beyond that, BeXide boasts a portfolio of other games spanning tie-in titles and original IPs dating back to the original PlayStation in 1999 under its Bomber eXpress studio name. The BeXide games list on its official Japanese website does a great job of showing just how expansive their history really is!
Well, one of those games from BeXide was the ill-fated and short-lived Bullet Break (バレットブレイク), no "Super." This mobile-exclusive game released in 2019 for iOS and Android, only in Japanese (although to my understanding, downloadable globally). The gameplay is a mix of pinball and Arkanoid, similar to World Flipper or any number of other games where you launch characters at enemies with a Puzzle Bobble-style catapult and watch things explode into pretty-colored particles.
Here is some gameplay of the original Bullet Break, showing the tutorial and onboarding.
In October of 2020, just 13 months after launch, Bullet Break on mobile would shut down. In its wake would be another announcement: the development of a console-focused title in which the characters of Bullet Break would return.
Then, in August of 2022, the world would see the rise of the successor. Super Bullet Break.
The quick-and-dirty
In the interest of time, I'll skip the summary of how Mega Crit's Slay the Spire works, and assume you're familiar with the game already. If you're not, please, please give it a shot. For reasons I'll get into soon, I would strongly recommend anyone interested in playing Super Bullet Break to play (and enjoy!) Spire first.
Now, SBB is really all about video games, serving as the main theme while the "Bullets" and gun-related aspect being relegated just to a few themed keywords. On launch you'll see a series of seven "games" in the main menu, which will be the maps that make up SBB's main campaign. Each "game" functions like the Spire in Slay the Spire, curated for a specific difficulty level and world-theme, with the majority following Spire's three-act structure. The exceptions are a boss rush and a couple marathon-style five-act maps.
Starting up the game serves up the tutorial, followed by gradually unlocking more characters, maps, and content as you progress through the main story. So, for example, you must beat Monochrome Tactics as player-character Akari before switching to Hikaru tasked with clearing Seasons of Love, and so on across the four playable characters and seven maps. The linear progression gating is a blessing in disguise to protect you from the game's brutal difficulty curve. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
So that's the structure of Super Bullet Break. If you're a veteran of Slay the Spire and are just out for some more novelty in a package beyond Spire mods, then SBB offers new "cards," synergies, and enemies to play with in abundance. But the devil's in the details and the angel's in the differences, so let's dive in to what makes SBB unique.
The differences
Terminology: A Primer
A good portion of the Super Bullet Break experience as a Slay the Spire player is just going "oh, so that's what this game calls it" over and over again. I'll generally be using game-specific terms as appropriate for each game. Feel free to skim over this table and return here if you're confused.
| Slay the Spire | Super Bullet Break | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Character | Character | The person/thing you play as. Will affect the kinds of items and synergies you encounter. |
| Card | Bullet | A singular game "unit" that performs some action for a certain cost. |
| Deck | Magazine | The whole set of aforementioned units that the player has at their disposal. |
| Act | Floor | A major segment of a game run, made up of nodes consisting of battles, shops, rest stops, and random events. |
| Color | n/a (suit) | The "suit" that a card/bullet comes from, with all cards of the same "suit" synergizing with each other. For SBB I can't find an in-game designation so I'll just call this "suit." |
The Deckbuilding
Okay, let me explain what is by far the biggest difference between Super Bullet Break and Slay the Spire: what exactly deckbuilding involves for each game.
With Slay the Spire, you choose a character, which limits the cards "in play" to those of your character's color. Red cards for the Ironclad, green cards for the Silent, and so on. Playing as the Ironclad will start you with a Red deck, make you encounter Red cards in shops and battle rewards, and so on. Special classes of cards exist that are present across characters, but the predominant kind of cards you will see are ones specifically crafted for--and balanced to--your chosen character. There are very few ways to get cards of other characters' colors, and you'd have to go out of your way to do so.
Super Bullet Break also has a similar concept of card "suits", but these are tied to the in-universe video games. That is, the game Monochrome Tactics has a set of bullets themed around it, as does Seasons of Love and so on. Each of the six main suits (plus one extra post-game suit) is similarly designed to synergize within itself, oftentimes employing suit-unique mechanics. But here's the beautiful catch: all suits are always in play, no matter the map or character you choose. Let me repeat that. When you deckbuild, you will encounter bullets from every suit: all six/seven. Everything is fair game, all the time.
Any Slay the Spire player will, at this point, either be recoiling in horror or be frothing at the mouth in feverish eagerness. Imagine the cross-suit synergies! The terrible deck-bloating anti-synergies! Imagine trying to manage it all run after run, scrambling to make a deck that's even remotely coherent!
If it sounds like the recipe for a fun but chaotic mess, it is. We'll unpack that in detail later, but at a high level, I'll say that it's a good time. The possibilities that mixed suits open up are quintessentially "deckbuilding" design. At their best, they prime the player for some dynamic, one-of-a-kind runs that truly take advantage of the randomized roguelike aspect of the game.
Everything else
Look, I already revealed the ace in the hole. Everything else is just secondary to how dramatically different the deckbuilding is. In very brief form, here's a couple of other fun quirks that differentiate Super Bullet Break from its Slay the Spire inspiration. In sum, these changes make SBB markedly distinct.
Bullet upgrades are random traits.
Unlike Spire where a given card has a specific and unchanging Plus variant, Bullets in SBB have something called a Cartridge that grants it attributes. Sometimes it's "cost -1" or "attack power +1" and other times it's global passives like "reduces the cost of all Monochrome Tactics bullets" or "survive an otherwise fatal attack once per combat." Cartridges are essential to doing well in SBB and deckbuilding is just as much about them as it is about the bullets they're attached to.
Shield and Armor systems.
Slay the Spire's monolithic Block system is expressed in SBB as Shield--which always expires at the start of the next turn--and Armor--which lasts forever until depleted by damage or debuffs. The difference might seem like a technicality as there are plenty of ways to keep Block across turns in Spire, but the presence of dedicated counters for Shield and Armor in SBB make managing them a little different, and much more ubiquitous.
Wait-value turn-based combat.
Positioning and range systems.
1 2 3 4 5 where 3 is the center. No matter how few or many enemies there are the moment, those five position slots always exist. This is played around with in a few ways, like duo bosses taking up positions 2 and 4 by default, or additional minion spawns (Adds) appearing in the closest open position, or certain enemies actually able to reposition themselves to another spot as part of their turn. Some Bullets are granted a range to handle mobs, spanning from ◯ to ◯ ◯ ◯ to ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯ ◯, the last of which will hit every single enemy on the field. This differs from Spire's "one enemy", "random enemy", and "all enemies" range system, and while enemies in SBB won't be constantly moving around, range is always a relevant part of how you play, especially if the two enemies you're fighting are in slots 1 and 5 so a medium-range Bullet can't hit both in one turn.Vastly different status effects, buffs, and debuffs.
Although SBB has analogues to the Strength, Weak, Poison, and Artifact, they are rough approximations at best. One of the few setbacks to coming to Super Bullet Break if you're experienced in Slay the Spire is unlearning your intuitive sense of how status effects work, since they behave differently in this game. Poison is now a flat 3% HP reduction. Attack up/down on enemies wears off after one attack. And so on.
The point of this non-exhaustive list is to show just how differently Super Bullet Break plays in summation. The superficial elements are nice and familiar, but if you enjoy learning the ins and outs of a game system, SBB gives you plenty to figure out and master even if you come in as a Slay the Spire expert.
The (first) bottom line
I've decided to split up my deep-dive into Super Bullet Break into two parts, with this section marking a sort of checkpoint for you, reader. If you've read so far and Super Bullet Break sounds interesting, my positive recommendation is to check it out... but make sure to play Slay the Spire first. In my opinion, Spire is a tightly-tuned game that does a much better job explaining its mechanics, teaching you how to play intuitively and through practice, and ultimately giving you a very good handle on how the traditional roguelike deckbuilder structure should play. While the flaws of Super Bullet Break that I'll detail shortly are far from fatal, I strongly feel that the best way to give the game a fair shot is to come in with a solid grasp of Spire so you know how to handle SBB's quirks, which come aplenty.
Coming up in the next (and final) part is a more detailed breakdown of the Super Bullet Break game flow, and the elephant in the room... the game's balance problems.
So if you decide to stick around, you can join me for the fun. Until then, enjoy some Slay the Spire and perhaps even some Super Bullet Break if you so choose. See you in the next one.