Side Project

Cosmic YenJai

Cosmic YenJai is a bullet hell game developed in Unity during my first-ever Unity course at Futuregames. The assignment was to concept and build a complete game from scratch in just three weeks.

Unity course project 3-week deadline Bullet hell prototype

Play Cosmic Yen-Jai

Project Overview

Cosmic YenJai started as a course assignment and quickly became my first deep dive into designing a full bullet hell loop. The core challenge was shipping a playable game under heavy time pressure while still making the combat feel expressive.

My focus was to build a game that looked charming and readable while still delivering fast, dense projectile patterns that demanded precision.

Inspiration & Visual Direction

During development, I was heavily invested in the Touhou series, which pushed me toward implementing a bullet hell structure. At first I assumed the core mechanics would be straightforward, but balancing readability, pacing, and fairness became the real challenge.

For player control, holding Shift reveals the hurtbox for precision dodging, similar to Touhou focus mode. Unlike Touhou, I also added a dash to support fast repositioning and riskier recovery plays.

For art direction, I drew strong inspiration from Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt. I wanted a simple but highly appealing style that was possible to execute within three weeks.

Development Challenges & Post-Mortem

Difficulty Balancing

A major takeaway from this project was difficulty tuning. After watching players, I realized the game ended up far too hard.

The Player Experience: the difficulty curve was so steep that many players struggled to even reach phase two.

Proving the Concept

Even with the steep difficulty, I wanted to prove the mechanics were still mathematically fair. To demonstrate that the game was beatable, I completed a no-hit run myself.

Doing the no hit run to prove a point

Art & Development Gallery

1. Early Concepts & Wireframing

Hand-drawn paper prototype of Cosmic YenJai user interface and gameplay space — Paper layout exploring HUD placement and control readability.

Wireframe sketch of boss positioning and bullet density for Cosmic YenJai — Early boss/player framing with bullet density planning.

Digital concept sheet for Cosmic YenJai character and icon direction — Digital concept pass for character, icons, and palette.

Early Ideation: hand-drawn paper prototypes and digital sketches helped map UI layout, player controls, boss placement, and the overall bullet hell density.

2. Character Sprites & Animation

First jester boss sprite concept for Cosmic YenJai — Boss iteration A.

Second jester boss sprite concept for Cosmic YenJai — Boss iteration B.

Third jester boss sprite concept for Cosmic YenJai — Boss iteration C.

Player character concept and front-facing sprite direction — Cosmic clown.

Sprite Development: original pixel art for the protagonist and main boss with bold, contrasting colors to keep silhouettes readable against dense bullet patterns.

3. Bullet & Projectile Assets

Blue orb bullet sprite for Cosmic YenJai

Heart icon projectile sprite for Cosmic YenJai

Projectile Set: custom bullet sprites created to support readable pattern variety and clear hit-state feedback during dense encounters.