StarBurst
A neon pixel-art bullet hell. Dodge dense bullet patterns, graze for combo, fight bosses, and build a stronger ship between waves.
▶ Play in browser · itch.io · Trailer
Features
- Pixel art authored as text maps (see AI note under Credits) at a native 640×360, scaled with whole-pixel steps so every pixel is the same size.
- Readable bullet patterns: orbs, rings, needles, and shards each have their own shape. Your true hitbox is a small marked dot, and near misses (grazes) build your combo.
- Three ships: Pulsar (balanced), Nova Dart (fast and fragile), and Titan (heavy armour). Each has its own hull, speed, damage, and fire rate.
- Upgrades between waves: unlock and level up dash, forcefield, and phase shift, plus thrusters and hull repairs.
- Bosses every 5th wave with telegraphed attacks and phase changes. After the authored waves, endless mode keeps scaling up.
- Quests, best runs, and three difficulty levels.
- Accessibility options:
- Rebind any key.
- Use a high-contrast or colour-blind-safe orange bullet palette.
- Turn on assist mode.
- Turn off flashes and screen shake.
- Lower graphics quality and show an FPS counter.
- Plays anywhere: keyboard, gamepad, and touch controls. It installs as an app (PWA) and works offline after the first visit.
- Boards: local top 10 (all-time and daily) on every build. Builds with an online API add WORLD and W.DAILY boards with a 3-letter callsign, and send anonymous run statistics that are used to balance the game. One switch (Settings → Online) turns all of that off. Details:
docs/PRIVACY.md, backend: server/.
Controls
| Action | Keyboard (default) | Gamepad | Touch |
|---|
| Move | Arrow keys / WASD | Left stick / D-pad | Drag on the left side of the screen |
| Fire (hold) | Space | A / RT | FIRE button |
| Dash | Shift | LB / RB / LT | Dash button |
| Forcefield | Z | X | Shield button |
| Phase shift | X | Y | Phase button |
| Pause | Esc | B / Start | Pause button (top centre) |
| Fullscreen | F | | |
- To change keys, go to Settings → Controls. Each action can have two keys. Menus, gamepads, and touch controls always use the default layout, so a bad binding can always be fixed from the menu.
- Your ship always faces and fires straight up the screen. Movement is everything: line up your shots by flying under things.
- To make enemy bullets easier to see, set Settings → Enemy bullets to Contrast (white cores and dark outlines) or Orange (every hostile bullet turns orange, against your cyan shots).
- Settings → Assist mode slows enemy bullets, gives you 50% more hull, and widens the graze window. The run is labelled ASSIST MODE on screen, and the save marks it as not leaderboard-eligible.
Survive the timed waves and pick an upgrade after each one.
Originally made for Bullet Hell Jam 6.
Development
Built with JavaScript, Phaser 3.90, and Vite. Everything, including Phaser and the fonts, is bundled locally, so the game works offline. The only network use is the optional online API (boards and anonymous stats, off unless the build sets VITE_API_URL). The pixel art is not made of image files: every sprite is an ASCII map in src/art/ that is baked into textures at startup, and sound is synthesized at runtime. A strict Content-Security-Policy is injected into production builds.
npm install
npm run dev # dev server with hot reload (http://localhost:5173, ?scene=Game jumps straight into a run)
npm run build # production build in dist/ (relative paths: upload the folder anywhere, e.g. itch.io)
npm run preview # serve the production build
npm run check # static checks: syntax, sprite maps, texture contract, PWA manifest
npm run test:smoke # headless smoke test of the whole game loop (needs Chrome; set CHROME_PATH if not found)
npm run test:smoke:prod # same, plus the production bundle and its service worker
npm run test:server # online API: validation, ranking, rate limit, summary (Node 22.13+)
npm run test:online # the real game against the real API handler: callsign, world board, offline queue
npm run server:dev # local API on :8787 (VITE_API_URL=http://localhost:8787 npm run dev to use it)
npm run telemetry # real-player balance report from the API (see server/README.md)
npm run gif # re-record docs/media/gameplay.gif (needs ffmpeg)
npm run icons # regenerate favicon / PWA icons from the pixel-art source
npm run compliance # release checks: asset allowlist, secrets, licence metadata, no dev hooks in dist/ (see docs/COMPLIANCE.md)
CI (.github/workflows/ci.yml, read-only token, no secrets) runs check, npm audit, build, compliance, and the smoke test on every push and pull request. It uploads the build as the starburst-dist artifact.
There are a few more tools: node tools/shot.mjs takes screenshots of the running game, node tools/render-sprites.mjs renders sprite sheets, and node tools/qa.mjs runs a leak and flow check over every screen. In dev builds, window.__dbg exposes test hooks (skipToWave, boss, godMode, spray, …).
Here's where things live:
- Scenes:
src/scenes/
- Gameplay (player, enemies, waves, bosses, bullets):
src/objects/
- Systems (save, input bindings, audio, quality):
src/systems/
- Pixel art (text-map sprites, baked at startup):
src/art/
- Audio:
public/assets/audio/
Before you change visuals or code structure, read docs/STYLE.md and docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.
Credits
- Design and direction: Kiril Petrovski.
- Code and pixel-art sprite maps: written with AI coding assistants (Anthropic's Claude) under the developer's direction and review.
- Engine: Phaser 3.90 (MIT). Build tool: Vite (MIT).
- Fonts (SIL Open Font License, via Fontsource):
- Sound and music: synthesized at runtime by the game's own code; no audio files are shipped.
- Full list of third-party components and licence texts: THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.
AI-generated concept art
The images in docs/concept-art/ are AI-generated concept art made during planning. They are not part of the game, are not hand-made pixel art, and are not shown as gameplay. The game's own art is the text-map pixel art in src/art/.
Licence
Proposed licensing (the maintainer has to confirm it, see docs/COMPLIANCE.md):
- Source code: MIT, Copyright (c) 2026 Kiril Petrovski.
- Original pixel art and generated audio: CC BY 4.0.
- Third-party components (Phaser, Vite, fonts) keep their own licences, see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.
Security issues: see SECURITY.md. Contributions: see CONTRIBUTING.md.
