good girls go to bullet heaven, bad girls go to picayune dreams

you might have heard me praise picayune dreams before. i talk about it often — it's become the ruler by which i measure survivor clones. in fact, i view it as the genre finally maturing from interactive screensaver into playability — this specific phrasing is in part because i'm mean and find those games terribly dull, but it's also a genuine criticism of vampire survivors' single mechanic stretching itself for far too long. but this is not a vampire survivors review so i'm not here to complain about that.

picayune dreams is a pretty straightforward game: you kill hordes of enemies while listening to great breakcore, getting exp for weapons along the way. every 5 minutes or so, enemies stop spawning and once you kill them all you fight a bullet hell boss. defeat five bosses and clear the run, and you can choose to loop pretty much indefinitely afaik. the key thing to me is these bullet hell bosses: they do a great job of breaking up the monotony of kiting enemies around while your character autoshoots. also you can toggle into 2x speed at any point, which makes the slow first stage much snappier, and once your build is afk-able you can get to the next boss twice as fast as well (plus there's a speedrun leaderboard and i feel smug for being faster than my friend).

so what we have here is a perfectly paced horde survival game that looks really fucking stylish (enemies are all unique and the 3d render style is super charming ← hylics fan), has an amazing and varied soundtrack (the final boss music!!) and gives you delightfully over the top weapons (i'm pretty sure nearly any build is viable, so while it's a roguelite you're not too bound by rng). oh and it even has a nice little story.

besides the pre-fight banter, defeating bosses for the first time drops their memories, which are short little surreal rpg maker style vignettes that develop the characters and setting, and how we got to the current stage of affairs. the gameplay is already so good the story segments didn't really need to be anything of note, but they are, and it's a really great touch. and it makes progressing through the bosses feel more rewarding.

and the bosses themselves are definitely the stars of the show. besides their importance for the pacing, they're very distinct and just challenging enough, and really charming overall, even before the story drops. the bullet patterns don't really get any harder when going up in difficulty (overdrive makes enemies faster and tankier). you have to survive longer, sure, but the patterns stay the same. which is fine, i'm no difficulty hound, but it'd be pretty cool. well at least this way i could beat overdrive 5 and even get the true ending (complete the first four bosses flawlessly), all while being kinda bad at videogames. still missing the true hitless achievement but i don't mind.

contagion update: hey guess what! with this update bosses get an infected variant when you loop. new dialogue, new music and much harder bullet patterns. they're faster and more aggressive and getting hit by the rabbit after getting used to flawlessing her jumpscared me. really awesome.

speaking of the update, it also adds more skills and overall lengthens progression by adding a prestige system that's effectively a ng+, wiping your experience (save for your overdrive levels) in exchange for one level and 10% extra profile exp (not run-exp though). if you're returning for the update, i'd play around with the new skills and unlock some new stuff before prestiging, but it's not too hard to work your way back to a decent amount of levels, especially if you've got your overdrive points.

additionally, freeplay is now available right at the menu, though it's a little clunky if you wanna use it for practice and not exactly the same as the debug menu. it's more cumbersome than just spawning a boss to play against or giving yourself specific upgrades. i get why roguelikes don't have stage practices like pure bullet hells but i can still (picayune) dream ok. especially since the infected bosses are much more bullet hellish than the base variants.

and the final big change (new weapons and side bosses are cool but they're not Game Changing) is the introduction of suits, which are basically classes. these have different perks and downsides over standard cyl, some even starting with different weapons (i haven't unlocked that many yet, but there's a meelee tank which is cool). i can see fragile (instadeath with a stronger starting shot) being useful for chasing hitless. opens up speedrun potential as well.

overall the update extends replayability and meta progression a fair bit, which i don't think is necessarily a measure of quality and i very much like tight games that end, but this feels more like an enhanced edition than a case of scope creep, with the infected bosses being exactly what the game needed (not that it felt incomplete before!). it's an update for the difficulty freaks, and i'm not one of them but appreciate that nevertheless.

so uh yeah that's picayune dreams. when i get tired and overstimulated at like. the shopping mall or whatever you can bet your ass i'm thinking of booting this game up to listen to its fucking amazing ost and chill out killing weird 3d creatures for a half hour. also it's really fucking cheap, and this is coming from someone living in a country with weak ass currency. so give it a go!

tips and strats

not comprehensive, i'm not even that good plus this is based on my playstyle and there are definitely other strats. but just a starting point.

don't get hit lol. in all seriousness this became my chief strategy for beating the game. there are ways to make a tank that just eats damage but i haven't really messed with the "meal to go" branch of the loadout tree — why risk it, plus you get an extra level for killing bosses flawlessly (ie no hits [for true flawless bragging rights also no bombs, but you get the level even if you do bomb]). the angel wings knocks enemies back, and the stun status effect keeps them away for a bit. weapon size and speed lets you hit more enemies and more often. weapons that pierce, in particular eye2, are good for carving paths ahead of you.
manual aim. speaking of carving paths, i suggest using auto aim only for the bosses. i don't think it's very good at dealing with the hordes, because it splits your damage around and you're more likely to get swarmed. it's better to focus on a single direction if you need a path to escape. at least until your build is solid enough to mostly afk at 2x speed.
put all your eggs in one basket. classic survivors strat but i can't not say it. focus on getting many of a single item over several different items. without statues, you can get up to 12 types, which i think is a couple too many. at 4 items, you are guaranteed to be offered at least one upgrade you already own. once you're maxed out, you only get those items as your options (you can even toggle autoselect options).
get close to statues. i like playing with drills so statues come along for the ride. they're not always worth using, but can be blown up with a chain grenade (not your blackhole bomb) for a free level up. well. the actual cost is your curse % goes up a bit, which makes tankier and faster versions of enemies spawn once in a while. the risk is worth it to me, so i hang out near every statue to see if i can get a grenade to drop.
loadout synergies. again, just some nice pairs but not your only options by far:
- scavenger + no worries. encourages stockpiling bombs. this is great because 1) each blackhole is an extra 10% hp if you're quick enough and 2) you get to skip tricky boss patterns if you need to.
- hot pursuit + confidence. hit the bricks better and improve your dps while at it. add in battery lick (and a bunch of electric eels) and you can flee from some bosses (biker is always cheesable by running diagonally if you're fast enough).
- backwards + reversal core. essentially a free weapon upgrade and one of your bullets is more or less guaranteed to hit.
- i think you can't go wrong with the exp branch as well, and drills are pretty nice (most have a small downside but there's also a couple that are freebies). crits might seem kinda useless but you're killing so many enemies that 1% becomes pretty likely actually.

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