Spanish studio makes a bullfighting game we’d be OK with playing

polygon.com:

Bullet hell, meet bullfighting.

No one-liner better describes Bullfighter Neon, pitched to Kickstarter backers earlier this week by the Spanish indie studio Relevo. The 13-year-old company has specialized in homages to the sub-sub-genre of “futuristic sports” seen in 1990s titles like Windjammersor Cyberball, and their latest effort emerged, appropriately enough, from a bull session a few years ago.

“At the time we were dealing with other projects,” Jon Cortazar, Relevo’s executive director, told Polygon. “But when we decided to start a new project, aiming for crowdfunding, Bullfighter Neon instantly came to our minds. It’s the kind of crazy idea, with a pinch of controversy, that could help to champion a Kickstarter.”

To be very clear: This isn’t literal bullfighting (or, rather, the video game depiction of it). Nor are Cortazar and his colleagues fans of it, even if there’s a strong cultural attachment to the blood sport in Spain. (Relevo is based in Bilbao, where the 14,781-seat Vista Alegre plaza has held bullfighting contests since 1882.)

Their concept involves a robot bull; moreover, the bull is not attacked. The goal instead is to evade and deflect its attacks, until its battery conks out and the bull keels over. It’s more muleta (cloak) than it is espada.

“We set from the very beginning strong frontiers on accepting violence inside the game,” Cortazar said. “We designed a robot fight in which the robot has all the firepower and the armored bullfighter just has a light muletato deal with the challenge. The only way to win is to deplete all its [the robo-toro’s] battery by using the neon muletaand doing passes while dodging and repelling its attacks.”

This is where the bullet hell comes in; players must memorize or