Fire Upon the Pendulum

The universe runs on clockwork — and it's winding down.

Fire Upon the Pendulum is a vertical-scrolling bullet hell (danmaku) set in a clockwork cosmos gripped by the arrhythmia. Gears slip, circuits misroute, pendulums fight each other. You play the colorless witness, a small stranger who can read the machine — and wherever she passes, its tempo returns.

Read the machine, find the gap

• Cadence as threat — every pattern fires on a readable period. Survival is learning the machine's tempo, not memorizing chaos.
• Clockwork determinism — no hidden RNG. Winding springs, meshing gears and lighting circuits telegraph each attack before it lands.
• Lattice & gap — every volley is a complete symmetric figure (rings, stars, weaves, mandalas); the way through is the shape its symmetry leaves open.
• Hand-drawn pixel-art bosses, each the spirit of a seized mechanism — with petty pre-fight banter.
• Four difficulties (Easy / Normal / Hard / an unlockable fourth), visible focus hitbox, graze scoring.

Controls

• Arrow keys — move
• Z — shoot / advance dialogue
• X — bomb
• Shift — focus (slow movement, smaller hitbox)

Install (Windows 64-bit)

Download the zip, extract it, and run Fire Upon the Pendulum.exe.

v0.2.0 — the second entry in the FU ("Fire Upon") series.