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Design notes, milestones and lessons from the workshop. We build in the open.

PULSE//ZERO

OUT NOW: PULSE//ZERO v0.5.0: EVOLUTION

v0.5.0 is out. Every run now picks a Combat Profile and a Sector that rewrite the rules of the arena — backed by eleven new enemies, four Elite variants and two new bosses.

  • release
  • pulse-zero
PULSE//ZERO

Devlog #006 — The Living Grid: A Stage That Reacts

The arena floor in PULSE//ZERO is not a backdrop — it is a single shader that listens to the whole game and answers in light. Here is what the Living Grid is, why a reactive stage is the thing that makes the game sing, and how it works.

  • pulse-zero
  • design
  • shaders
PULSE//ZERO

Devlog #005 — Mini-bosses

The Adaptive Director decides when a run earns a mini-boss. This is what shows up: a reusable boss chassis, an encounter that never overstays its welcome, and the Elite Hunter — three telegraphed mechanics that reward reading tells over out-DPSing.

  • pulse-zero
  • design
  • bosses
PULSE//ZERO

Devlog #004 — Open-Sourcing Adaptive Music for Godot

We built a tempo-locked adaptive music system for Godot 4 — vertical layer blending and bar-quantised section transitions — and we've released it under MIT. It's the system PULSE//ZERO's music is moving onto, and it's yours to use in anything.

  • pulse-zero
  • audio
  • systems
  • open-source
  • godot
PULSE//ZERO

OUT NOW: PULSE//ZERO v0.4.0: DISTORTION

v0.4.0 is a systems update — Overdrive becomes an earned charge→spend burst, combos climb to x32, bosses reshape the arena, and a rebuilt director paces the whole run.

  • release
  • pulse-zero
PULSE//ZERO

Devlog #003 — The Adaptive Director

Static spawn timers make every run feel the same. PULSE//ZERO has an invisible game master instead — a deterministic, explainable pacing system that reads the run and decides who shows up, when, and how hard. Here is how it breathes.

  • pulse-zero
  • design
  • systems
PULSE//ZERO

Devlog #002 — Designing PULSE//ZERO's Enemies

How we build enemies in PULSE//ZERO: a behaviour-object architecture, five archetypes that each ask a different question of the player, and an elite system that remixes them. Bosses come later — this is the rank and file.

  • pulse-zero
  • design
  • enemies
PULSE//ZERO

BETA Now Available!

I’ve been building PULSE//ZERO in public — a solo-built neon twin-stick bullet-hell where the arena fights back and the enemies never stop coming. It’s now playable as a public…

  • pulse-zero
  • itch
PULSE//ZERO

Devlog #001 — PULSE//ZERO Vertical Slice

The first vertical slice of PULSE//ZERO is playable. Here is what the slice proves, what it deliberately leaves out, and where the Living Grid goes next.

  • pulse-zero
  • milestone
  • vertical-slice