In this bullet hell your time limit is also your health bar

In a special twist on the punishing nature of the bullet hell, Godstrike is a twin-stick shooter where your time limit on each boss is also your health bar and the currency you spent to active your powers. Get hit? Now you've got less time to win. Want to use your sweet alternate weapon? It better be worth the time that power costs you.

Godstrike's protagonist is Talaal, who appears to work for God and goes around killing lowercase g gods. To that end, it's a boss rush, all about fighting big nasties and showing them you're in charge. It's based around customizable skills, and you choose a loadout before battles to synergize your passive abilities with active ones. The full game will have several modes, like a competitive score-driven setup, a roguelite mode, and a mode that lets Twitch viewers affect the game.

I got a look at some Godstrike gameplay on this weekend's Game Dev Direct stream, and though I'm a fair-weather fan of twin-stick shooters it immediately grabbed my attention. Something about the time-as-health twist and the addition of roguelike builds via passive and active abilities really speaks to me. It's a tension that forces you to pay attention, but doesn't seem too punishing: You didn't die, you just ran out of time.

You can find Godstrike on Steam, where it will launch this spring. You can also see more about it on developer OverPowered Team's website.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.