Video Game / Silver Bullet

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Silver Bullet is a 2025 Retraux video game developed by 1CC Games and published by Flynn's Arcade. As the names of the companies imply, it is inspired by arcade shooting galleries and fixed Rail Shooter coin-op games from the 1980s and 1990s like Blood Bros. or Alligator Hunt. It is available for Steam and Nintendo Switch.

Vampire hunter Van Helsing lives with his faithful hound Silver and his six puppies: one day, Reggie the Vampire kidnaps the doggies and hides them in various spooky places, each one guarded by a fearsome boss. Van Helsing grabs his trusty crossbow and Silver follows him everywhere from haunted mansions to dusty pyramids and creepy cemeteries.

As in the games that inspired it, the player can't move both the player character and his crosshair while shooting at the same time; thankfully Van Helsing has a dash move that can be used to deflect obstacles and destroy enemies that are on the same plane as him, and also tap the parry button to deflect bullets while staying in place, since he cannot dash through bullets or electric obstacles. Silver can also be used as a weapon to destroy enemy bullets and damage bosses when you have racked up enough destruction of enemies and scenery.

Not to be confused with the 1986 werewolf movie or the 2019 collectible card game of the same name.

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The game provides examples of:

• Aliens Steal Cattle: Or puppies in this case. The bonus stage "Dognap Nightmare" features UFO abducting the puppies with their tractor beams, naturally Van Helsing has to shoot them.
• Alliterative Name: Most of the stages and bonus stages. "Phantom Prelude", "Mystic Mansion", "Haunted Halls", "Target Terror", "Mesozoic Museum" and so on.
• Amusement Park of Doom: Third stage "Ghost Train", complete with Monster Clown enemies and monster decorations coming to life.
• Ancient Astronauts: The "Pyramid Cave" stage references this by having UFO as enemies besides mummies and scarabs. The boss Berg X is also an alien piloting a round mothership.
• Automatic Crossbows: Van Helsing's crossbow can shoot continuously as if it were a machine gun and also has Bottomless Magazines. He'll need them!
• Bedsheet Ghost: Enemies seldom found in a few stages.
• Bullet Hell: After the first two main stages the game becomes akin to this, with obstacles and bosses spraying an ungodly amount of bullets in various complex patterns. As in those games, Van Helsing's actual hitbox is small and represented by his glowing heart.
• Cute 'em Up: It can be considered this despite the horror theme, thanks to the colorful pixelated sprites, happy music, adorable pets and total lack of blood and gore.
• Dem Bones: Several enemies, one boss and also the skeletal shopkeeper found between stages.
• Edible Collectible: Deploying the special shot that uses Silver as a bullet turns all of the enemies and enemy bullets in the line of fire into items that can be picked up for points. The more accurate you are with your shots (accuracy is measured by a meter), the more valuable these items will be. Since the game's aesthetic is inspired by funfairs, carnivals and old-school arcades like Bubble Bobble, most of these are various kinds of candies and snacks. Higher-tier items are fruits while the highest tiers are no longer edible, being gems.
• Excuse Plot: Just like the good old games Silver Bullet is inspired by.
• Falling Blocks: The bonus stage appearing after "Pyramid Cave" and the unlockable endless mini-game that is an advanced version of it. Probably the only variant of Tetris where you can't influence the blocks' movement, but can just shoot at them so that the resulting shapes can be made into lines. And even then you also have to shoot the lines themselves to make them vanish!
• Gashadokuro: Third boss Fairhurst is basically this despite the Western aesthetics of the game. A humongous skeleton, we can only see his skull and the flaming fists he tries to crush Van Helsing with.
• Giant Spider: Technically all the spiders in the game, since they're as big as Van Helsing, but special mention for Boris, a gigantic tarantula and the second boss.
• The Grim Reaper: Small reapers are the targets in the very first stage and do not reappear until the very last one, where they are much more dangerous and accompanied by a giant reaper. Said giant reaper also acts as the Game-Over Man.
• Haunted House: The first two stages, "Mystic Mansion" and "Haunted Halls", are respectively the outside and inside of a mansion full of spooks.
• King Mook: The first three bosses are basically this respectively for witch, spider and skeleton mooks.
• Looks Like Orlok: Reggie is Orlok if he had greenish/teal skin and exaggerated cartoonish features.
• Michael Jackson's Thriller Parody: The final stage "Chiller Graveyard" features, among the regular zombies, a few ones wearing MJ's iconic red jacket from the Thriller video in the midst of dancing. They go "Hee Hee!" when you blow them up!
• Monster Mash: The whole game, but especially the "Ghost Train" stage where a series of decorations come alive and attack us with bullets. These are the heads of a skeleton, Frankenstein's Monster, a devil, the Phantom of the Opera and a fishman.
• Nice Hat: Van Helsing's top hat. As for the bad guys: Hazel's pointy witch hat, Boris' bowler hat and Fairhurst's tall top hat.
• Non-Indicative Title: In a sense. Van Helsing does not use silver bullets (being a vampire hunter) and, while there are werewolves, they are irrelevant mooks that only rarely appear in the final stage.
• Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: At the end when you beat Reggie, he says he genuinely just wanted to pet the puppies, but kidnapped them because they were afraid of him. Van Helsing retorts by saying that he could just have told him so.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: The fourth boss Tumak is identical to the other cavemen mooks that are the same size as Van Helsing's, but he's extremely durable and conjures a lot of bullets.
• Prehistoria: The stage "Mesozoic Museum" serves as this, the cavemen are apparently real but most of the dinosaurs are either exhibits (that you can blow up) or animatronics piloted by the stage's boss, Tumak.
• Pun-Based Title: Van Helsing does not use silver bullets, he uses his dog Silver as a bullet.
• Rewarding Vandalism: Shooting at the dinosaur exhibits in "Mesozoic Museum" and turning them all into dino skeletons will net a good amount of golden coins and also an achievement. Also, almost everything in the background can be destroyed and doing so will raise the Accuracy meter, which in turn will raise the value of the Edible Collectible items gained by using the special attack.
• Shout-Out: A few of them.
  • The second boss, Boris the Spider, is named after a The Who song.
  • The achievement for beating Boris without losing a life is named "Eight Legged Freaks".
  • The achievement for beating Hazel the Witch without losing a life is named "Toil and Trouble".
  • Another achievement is named "I Ain't Afraid of No GHOST", and the phrase is also referenced in the description of the "Haunted Halls" stage.
  • The achievement for destroying all the dinosaur exhibits is named "Afterlife Finds A Way".
  • Two of the floating faces in "Ghost Train" are the Phantom and the Gill Man.
  • The name of the final stage, "Chiller Graveyard", is a two-fer. It's a reference to Michael Jackson's Thriller given the setting and Zombie Michael enemies, but, because of the game's general gameplay and spooky themes, it also references the light gun horror arcade game Chiller (that however is WAY more gruesome and horrific than this one).
• Standard Snippet: The initial stage "Phantom Prelude" has a chiptune rendition of Toccata and Fugue in D minor as its BGM. A remix of the same is also used as soundtrack to the final fight with Reggie.
• Stock Animal Diet: The six puppies are captured by Reggie when two of his mooks dangle a huge Stock Femur Bone over their heads, while Van Helsing and Silver are sleeping.
• Title Drop: The achievement for defeating Reggie and completing the game is named "Silver Bullet".
• Tom the Dark Lord: Admit it, a vampire named "Reggie" doesn't sound all that menacing...
• Wicked Witch: Some enemies are the typical cackling green-skinned witches riding on brooms and dropping stuff from their cauldrons on us. And so is the first boss Hazel.