Danmaku
Here’s an interview with the makers of the game Geometry Wars, a game I find utterly fascinating for the way its very simple rule base quickly results in complex hallucinatory visions of beauty that are simultaneously mesmerising and baffling to watch.
After reading the interview, I moved on to the next tab I had open in my browser courtesy of Tom’s always excellent links. This was a post by Simon Wistow describing the iPhone version of the game rRootage. There I came across the word 弾幕 or danmaku meaning bullet hell:
…a sub-genre of shoot ‘em up video games in which the entire screen is often almost completely filled with enemy bullets.
Next time I’m trying to describe Geometry Wars I think I’ll just say It’s kind of danmaku.