If you are a survivorlike player, then I’m glad you made it here. I’m Kenneth, and this letter is mostly here to help set expectations for players familiar with the genre.

TL;DR version: if you’ve ever thought during a survivorlike run that you wished you had more control over when something like a specific attack happens, then Black Powder Magic might just be your game. If you’ve felt the opposite, then it might be a tougher sell.

We’re trying some new things with Black Powder Magic, and part of the reason we released the demo early was to see whether these ideas resonate with a broader audience. BPM stems from the idea that while we’ve really enjoyed many survivorlikes — Vampire Survivors included — we often felt we didn’t have enough control. That’s not criticism of those games in any way; it’s simply what motivated us to create our own take on the formula.

Unlike many survivorlikes, BPM expects quite a lot from the player and is intentionally designed to be challenging. You don’t just move your character and aim your weapon — you also time and aim your dashes, grenades, and in some cases your ultimates. We’ve focused heavily on making all gear act and feel unique, meaning weapons do not gradually “meld” into the same thing through upgrades. A pistol should not eventually feel like an automatic rifle just because its fire rate and magazine size got high enough. Some gear, especially ultimates, can even evolve their base behavior over the course of a run rather than simply becoming numerically stronger.

Staying true to the genre, there is still a passive layer in the game, but passives are intended to support your loadout rather than replace it. They also evolve mechanically across their three levels. Sometimes that means more damage, but more often it changes how the passive actually behaves or interacts with the rest of your kit.

To survive in Black Powder Magic, players are expected to use all of the tools available to them. AoE abilities should clear space faster than weapons alone. Crowd control should buy you breathing room to focus down a bruiser. A stun can interrupt a boss attack before it goes off. The game is designed around combining mechanics rather than simply scaling damage high enough to erase the screen.

That same philosophy extends to enemy design.

Enemies in BPM are layered into three categories: mobs, bruisers, and bosses. Mobs will feel the most familiar to survivorlike players. They act almost like terrain and attempt to overwhelm you through numbers and positioning. Bruisers are far fewer in number, but significantly more dangerous and behaviorally distinct. Bosses are one-off enemies with the most elaborate behaviors and stages.

Because of this structure, it is rarely enough to simply fire into the general direction of the “meatball.” The game expects players to combine mechanics, consider defense, prioritize targets, and think about both micro and macro positioning.

As a result, the pacing is also quite different from most survivorlikes. The arms race is less straightforward. Mechanical mastery can carry you through situations that would otherwise kill a stronger build, but strategic thinking and forethought about your loadout are equally important.

New enemy types appear less frequently, and difficulty is structured more like layered encounter “sentences” than constant linear pressure escalation. There are also generally fewer enemies on screen overall. The challenge comes less from sheer numbers and more from encounter composition, target prioritization, and overlapping threats.

We think we’re onto something pretty cool and something that feels genuinely different, but there are a lot of opposing forces at work here, and bringing them together into a cohesive experience hasn’t been easy.

More than anything, we want to know what people think and whether these ideas have broader appeal, while also understanding they may not be for everyone. At the very least though, if BPM feels different from its peers, those differences are very intentional.

- Kenneth, Black Powder Magic project lead and developer