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Bullet Candy 20th Anniversary Edition
Hi all,
I’ve just released a new, free update to Bullet Candy, the first since 2015! It’s live now on Steam and itch.io but if you bought the game direct from me in the past i’ll be in touch via email very soon.
This is a pretty big update, adding a lot of new AND old stuff and the start of a new gameplay mode i’ll be adding to during the rest of the year (and maybe beyond!). Hope you all enjoy it.
I’ve added the update log and some marketing fluff about what this update contains and the reason for doing it below, and i’ll be making a couple of how to play videos next week to support the new game modes.
There’s also a roadmap of what to expect in the coming month or so, including more levels for Bullet Candy 2026 and adding Bullet Candy Perfect to the mix. I’m doing this between other jobs, so i can’t be 100% on dates, but it’ll be as soon as i can get it done. Trailer below:
Bullet Candy 2026
As of May 4th this year, it will have been 20 years since the original release of Bullet Candy, Though it’s origins start much earlier than that. I Suppose that makes it officially retro now, rather than retro themed. 20 years prior to It’s release (1986) saw the release of SEGA’s Outrun, Nintendo’s first Metroid and Zelda games, Llamasoft’s incredibly difficult Iridis Alpha, early doors real time 3D shooter Starglider on the Atari ST and style over substance pioneer Defender of the Crown, all of which were pretty much digital antiques by 2006.
This version of Bullet Candy is an archive of the various versions that have been available. While I think the game has generally improved over time, I appreciate some folks express a preference for version X over version Y. Hopefully the different versions presented here will have something for everyone who has played the game in the last 20 years.
Initially released in 2006 on my personal website, selling a few copies here and there, Bullet Candy had a muted start. While the game garnered some praise from contemporary review sites and was generally well received by players in the know, it wasn’t until Valve offered the game a slot on Steam that it became known to a wider audience.
The original Steam version of Bullet Candy launched on Valentines Day 2007 and was one of the first handful of indie titles released on the store. Feedback from new players was positive, even if the game never made much money. Truthfully I was happy that people liked it, money was never the goal. This first Steam version is playable in this release as Bullet Candy 2007.
The next major release came in 2013 after the release of Bullet Candy’s sequel Scoregasm. This version fixed a slew of bugs that modern PCs had brought to light, made some positive changes to the gameplay and for a short while added some new visual effects that time and graphics drivers wouldn’t be kind to. An updated, visually fixed version is included in this release as Bullet Candy 2013.
Mini Bullet Candy, originally a web exclusive, was written to try out the new HTML5 graphics features intended to replace Flash. The version included in this release takes the original levels from that game and expands upon them with gameplay improvements and improved graphics and sound. This version makes that game available to play again for the first time since 2011.
In addition to these previously released versions, I’ve included a prototype of the game dating back to 2005. While the core of the game is present in this version, it’s missing a few of the mechanics that make Bullet Candy interesting. It’s also considerably harder! This prototype is playable from the Bonus Games menu.
As a final addition I’ve added a new mode, 2026 Remix. This is definitely Bullet Candy with the benefit of hindsight, making more of the firework-like effects of previous versions and designing the game more closely around the self-destruct mechanic so as to make it more present/obvious. I hope you enjoy it!
Bullet Candy has always been something of a puzzle to me. I’m still amazed how far it has gone, that people still buy, play it and enjoy it despite the many rookie mistakes in it’s original design. This archive release is a time capsule in a way, presenting the game, warts and all, as close to the original versions as is possible on modern hardware. I’ve omitted the original music. I’m sorry for inflicting that on you all. Thanks to John for the excellent new tracks!
Self indulgent waffle over! Thank you for buying a copy of Bullet Candy! In a world where it’s becoming increasingly difficult to sell creative works as an individual, be it games, books, music or whatever else without big tech taking their cut it’s more important than ever to support independent creators.
Thanks, Charlie (2026).
Roadmap
I’ll be continuing to add to Bullet Candy in the coming months, the idea being to have everything Bullet Candy available in one place, rather than different versions dotted about variously online. Here’s a general outline of what’s in the pipe…
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Bullet Candy Perfect - a 2009/10 3D version of Bullet Candy, currently only available in a not especially functional state on itch.io. This was originally a spin off from Bullet Candy’s pseudo-sequel, Scoregasm and in terms of gameplay is evolved from the 2007 Steam release but is lacking some of the refinements found in Bullet Candy 2013.
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Bullet Candy 2026 Level Packs - I’ll be adding more levels in sets of 5 or 10 over the course of the next few months, with the aim of taking the best of them and creating a proper Bullet Candy 2026 game. Looking through some old designs for Bullet Candy I noticed a few plans for a galactic chart, with levels arranged so that you can choose your path through to a few different endings,unlock secret routes etc. I can’t really remember why I didn’t implement this at the time, but it seems like a fun idea.
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Interactive how to play for Bullet Candy 2026 - There’s a few non-obvious mechanics at play on Bullet Candy 2026 which would benefit from being explained in game. Likewise a mission style sub-objective for the older game modes could help make the mechanics in those games more obvious.
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Improvements to the particle system - Bullet Candy throws a lot of particles around in a not particularly efficient way. While the game isn’t particularly demanding on even potato PCs, it would be good to reduce the general memory footprint of the game.
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General bug fixing etc. Let me know either on the Steam forum or itch community if you find anything up.
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Video guides for achievements on Steam and youtube.
Update notes:
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New menus, allowing you to choose various different versions of the game from the past and present, plus a bonus game menu featuring some formerly lost mini games and a pre-release prototype. The about tab for each game details more about each version, and the How To Play tab explain subtle changes in the rules between older versions etc.
- Bullet Candy 2007 - The original Steam version from 2007.
- Bullet Candy 2013 - The 2013 re-make which up ‘til now has been the most recent version available on Steam and itch.io.
- Mini Bullet Candy - Remake of the 2011 web mini game. Levels taken from the original game, effects enhanced.
- CG_01 prototype - A pre-release version from the end of 2005.
- Bullet Candy 2026: Level Pack 1 - The first in a series of level packs for a new spin on Bullet Candy, featuring new levels, effects and gameplay mechanics. More levels will be released in the coming months.
- Bonus Games - Survival and Asteroid modes, re-added from the original 2007 Steam version. Gauntlet mode re-added from a version for IGN (i think!) from around 2008.
Other things
- Replaced old soundtrack with something a little more easy on the ears.
- Added Steam support for Linux and MacOS.
- Added Support for SteamDeck/SteamOS
- Added Steam Leaderboards
- Fixed achievements, added 10 more for the new/old game modes
- Steam Cloud saves
- All builds of the game are now 64bit. A 32bit version of Bullet Candy from 2015/2017 is available via the betas menu in Steam/archive download on itch.io
- online scores via CheddaBoards for non-steam versions.
Buy A Copy!
Like the look?? Buya copy on itch.io or Steam
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Old Designs
scribbles! I’ve been working on an update to Bullet Candy recently as part of getting a new game writing framework together. As of the 5th of May this year the game is now 20 years old!
I’ll post more about what this 20th year update entails soon, but essentially it works as an archive of key builds of the game from over the years. There were quite a few different versions/rewrites/mini games etc. released back then, many of which haven’t been accessible for a long time. This new build aims to fix that.
Part of getting all these old versions together has involved a lot of digital archaeology, including discovering some ancient (2004?ish) scans of enemy designs. I’ve stitched a few of these together into the image above. There’s a few in there that never made it to the original games, i should do something about that…
Cheers Charlie.
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Son of Scoregasm Medal Guides
I’ve put together a playlist of guides to getting the score medals in Son of Scoregasm. You can take a look here: Medal Guide Playlist. These may be of use to you if you’re trying to get the achievements in thegame.
You Tube
I’ve been trying to be a bit more active on youtube, posting a couple of in development previews as well a shorts. If you’re interested you can subscrive to my Youtube channel here
50% off
Finally, if you’d like to try the game, you can grab a copy via one of the widgets below. The game is currently 50% off in the Steam/itch.io summer sale.
or on itch.io
Release
I should have a new old thing releasing in the next week, as well as an update to the C framework i’ve been writing to update my old games. Watch this space!
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Son of Scoregasm Update
I’ve been working pretty hard over the last month or so getting Son of Scoregasm back into fighting form, and while there’s still a few things I’d like to tackle I’m happy enough to release what I’ve been working on. I’ve uploaded an update to Steam which you can download now!
As the image suggests, Son of Scoregasm now runs on Steam Deck! It runs rather well too, full resolution at 60fps! It’s been pretty cool playing the game on it, testing away from my laptops. I’ve also added Arm Mac support.
I’ve also been recording a series of Youtube shorts covering how to get the score medals on each level in the game. These should start appearing on Youtube later today, if you’d like to take a look you can subscribe to my Youtube channel here.
It’s been pretty fun recording them and re-visiting the game properly for the first time in years. I’d forgotten how tough some of those levels are, especially towards the end. Maybe it’s just age dulling my reactions?
With regards to the future, I’m hoping to replace the old OpenGL renderer with the new SDL_GPU api. This should hopefully future proof the game a little more.
I’m also intending on replacing the GUIs in the game. These were designed originally around the limitations of the PS Vita and as such aren’t so great on PCs. I imagine this will be a complete pain to do, but very worth it. Watch this space!
I’ll also be updating the non-steam version of the game. This is mildly problematic at the moment as i need some kind of online score service to use. In the past I’ve rolled my own with PHP and MySQL but they usually get hacked so I’m on the lookout for something else. There are a few services I’ve found online but given how much SoS earns off of steam it’s hard to justify the expense, especially given how limiting some of them are. It’s real shame itch.io doesn’t offer something along these lines. I suspect it would make a lot of people happy.
Finally, if you’d like to try the game, you can grab a copy via the widget below.
Full list of changes/updates:
- Replaced broken online scores with Steam leaderboards. There is a global leaderboard for multi-level runs, and per-level leaderboards for score attack play.
- Removed controller config screen because…
- Sos now uses only SDls Gamepad library. This should mean any controller supported by steam will be configured automatically, or can be changed in Steam itself.
- Fixed Broken dependencies on linux. Now targetting steam runtime 4
- Fixed Steam Achievements not setting/syncing at times.
- You can now use the controller triggers to trigger the pulse attack
- Replaced libBass audio with SDL2_mixer as it plays better on SteamOS/Linux Various engine fixes brought to light over time.
- Thickened the line width of the vector font so it’s easier to read on SteamDeck or other small screens
- Default effects level is now set to high, as pretty much any PC released in the last decade should be able to run this at 60fps in 1080p. My 5yr old Thinkpad runs it at 4k without the fans coming on, so this should be fine…
- Slightly increased the range of the pulse attack.
- Steam cloud save support
- Added more controller glyphs
- Adjusted a tutorial stage so that enemies continue to spawn until the pulse attack is full.
- Dynamic controller add/remove
- Changed saving video settings so each machine you run the game on keeps it’s own record. This means if you play on PC at 4k, transferring your save to steam deck via steam cloud wont attempt to open a 4k window, resulting in misaligned glyphs.
- Fixed boss health bars not displaying in some circumstances
- Fixed buggy string replacement code.
- fixed audio volumes not adjusting in some circumstances.
- Re-based on SLD3, SDL3_Mixer and SDL3_TTF
- Removed old vector font code and replaced with a UTF8 compliant font so Steam usernames appear correctly in the leaderboards, or at least so far as the font allows.
- Made easy mode default. This game is HARD!
- Enemies now move more slowly in easy mode.
- Removed the sway effect on the GUI as it was causing text to be hard to read
- Adjusted enemy score values on extinguisher level to make the medal target more achievable.
- Arm Mac build. Mac version now require MacOS 14 Tahoe or above
- Linux version build against latest Ubuntu LTS (26.04) and Steam Runtime 4
- Windows build via mingw64. likely Win10 or greater
- Fixed buggy strrep code.
See you on the high scores!
Cheers Charlie
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Old Games
I’ve added some pages for my various old games here. There are other random creations but that page lists the most important.
There’s some history to them now I guess, given that the oldest among them was released 20 years ago. I’ve added a small trivia section to each page with a few fun facts etc. about each one. Admittedly, this has mostly been a nostalgic trip down memory lane for me but may be interesting to some of you. So much of what was happening back the in the indie games space is consigned to the internet archive. It’s incredible to see how things have progressed, good and bad.
It’s been my intention this year to get at least some of these old games running again on modern PCs and in some cases all new platforms.
Most of them are broken in some form or other, be it rendering issues, crash bugs, audio distortion etc. so it’ll be god to get them dusted off and working again as first class citizens on whatever platform.
I’d intended to start at the beginning with Bullet Candy, but I’ve added Son of Scoregasm into a forthcoming Steam Fest, so work has started there. Truthfully, I can’t remember too much about writing SoS, other than finding the Vita a pretty cool machine to work with, but I have been very pleased that all the old build/packaging scripts I’d written back then still mostly functioned!
I’ve fixed a ton of little bugs, updated/replaced the libraries I used with the latest versions, fixed the leaderboards which have long been defunct and added support for Steam Deck. The Deck is a pretty cool device, it’s been pretty fun to work with and a lot less labor intensive than i expected.
There’s a public beta available now on Steam should you wish to have a go. Any feedback would be much appreciated!
Post this update going live, I’ll be continuing to work on my game framework, which is still very early doors. It’d be nice to think I could get a prototype of something new working before the end of the year so I’m setting that as a target for the next six months along side updating the old stuff as framework development allows. I have plans for both old and new i feel confident with which helps a lot with motivation.
See you on the high-scores!
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Rise From Your Grave
Rise From Your Grave! I’ve had a bit of an unintentional break from games, 7 or eight years in fact, and it’s been almost 10 years since I released my last game, Son of Scoregasm, on PS Vita and PC. During this time I’ve been working as a chef, running a local kitchen. It’s been quite good fun!
That job has come to an end now, so I have more time to dedicate to writing games and maintaining my back catalog. It is my intention this year to get my older games running properly on modern PC platforms as all of them in their current states are broken in some way.
I’d like also to revisit some of those older titles, re-invent them a little and make them generally more appealing for new players. It’s been 20 years since my first game launched, which I guess makes it retro. 20 years prior to it’s release (1986) saw the release of SEGA’s Outrun, Nintendo’s first Metroid and Zelda games, Llamasoft’s incredibly difficult Iridis Alpha, early doors real time 3D shooter Starglider on the Atari ST and style over substance pioneer Defender of the Crown, all of which were pretty much digital antiques by 2006.
To this end I’ve been working on writing some new code that will help me port my older games to modern C APIs. The oldest of my games were written in a now dead language called Blitzmax which, fortunately, is syntactically similar to C, and though I’ll need to re-write the code completely it won’t be a complicated job.
I’ve decided to use the latest version of SDL as a base for this project. The new SDL_GPU 3D API abstraction library is pretty good based on what I’ve tried so far, and will definitely save me a lot of time porting to other platforms as well as opening up web games via emscriptem.
I’ve got the basics of 2D rendering, input and a few other bits up and running which you can take a look at over on my GitHub page. It’s early doors and the scripts will only run on Linux like OSes so far. I’ll get Windows building added soon. There’s a couple of examples there to show how to use it. Blitzmax was always very good at quick prototyping and generally getting out of the way and leaving you to code. I’m intending to maintain this as best I can in my homage to it.
The current plan is to get Bullet Candy, my oldest game, updated by the middle of June, with Irukanji to follow shortly after. Bullet Candy has many, many different versions. Distributors were plentiful back in the noughties before Steam really took over, and often they’d want something platform specific in their version of the game. Many of these custom bits were just cosmetic, but there’s a couple of game modes that aren’t in the current Steam and itch.io builds, some extra levels here and there etc. which would be good to put back, as well as things from the various prototypes of the game that were cut due to time or lack of ability on my part back then.
That’s all for now. I’ll have more to show next update…
Cheers Charlie.
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