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Oh that's definitely significantly better on stage 2!

I wasn't expecting such a prompt response. I'm thankful for the changes so far, and looking forward to your future progress!

The graphics are definitely much improved over the previous game, the character portraits and artwork are very cute, and the music and backgrounds are also significantly better.

I find that not being able to shoot or bomb during your respawn iframes feels extremely bad. If you don't want the player to be able to damage the boss during your iframes, please just give the boss iframes instead, the feeling like I'm going to die again without being able to do anything about it is rather uncomfortable and not anything like other shmups or touhou games.

The respawn in place is also a little bit iffy with how some of the gimmicks work, and the death animation being that prominent and long also feels quite bad.

The item chain mechanic is fairly fun and satisfying when used, bombing freezing the chain is a little mean (but I sort of understand why it's this way).

Stage 1 is fine but a little dull if played repeatedly (needing to do this due to no continues).

Stage 2 (right path) is awesome and tons of fun, stage 2 (left path) has very strange telegraphs that don't feel like they properly communicate what's happening and kills you repeatedly, on top of other stage segments sometimes also happening on top of that - it's quite a bit overwhelming for Normal difficulty, and it's supposed to be the "safe" path? Perhaps the fox is just lying.

Stage 3 has an interesting gimmick but it feels really poorly taught to the player by the game, lots of information seems kind of meaningless and it's very hard to tell what's actually able to hit you in most attacks in the time you're given. The one that splits into grid squares stands out as the easiest to understand and dodge on first viewing. The colors are very nice, though.

Also, no continues makes it much more tedious to get to see and understand the gimmicks compared to other touhou games, as you have to go back to the start every time you're met with a gimmick that kills you by feeling poorly explained or telegraphed.

I really liked the character of stage 3, as well as the art gallery's background, it all feels very well done especially compared to the previous game's art

The player sprite was really really good, especially the way it looked at the mouse cursor0

The way firing worked did not feel particularly good, as no autofire and the rate of fire being limited by a cooldown made the shooting feel very unresponsive. Generally these types of games limit the player shot using a "number of onscreen shots" shot limit, but otherwise just not limiting the player at all feels best in that regard.

Everything felt great to play - it really did felt like a shmup

The cat's eye pattern was fun (and the sprite made me laugh)

Russian Doll was also a really good idea.

Bomb giving huge score was cool.

The screenshake was ABSURDly too much I basically could not tell what was happening at first boot

The graphics and presentation was generally pretty good.

Both player and boss had wayyy too much health so the few patterns present lasted way too long.

I really liked the spritework but didn't much enjoy how everything being the same color as the bullets made it really hard to see, especially with the blood particles (which thankfully were possible to turn off)
I also don't think screenshake on every bullet fired was necessarily the right play, it'd have been fine if it were on just enemy kills or something.

The pick 3 implementation was solid and things generally worked as they were supposed to. Sorry to hear you got sick before implementing the final boss but the text made me laugh so it didn't make me dock points

The spritework was really good! I liked the artwork and the way the cutscenes presented themselves.

Got the flower softlock because the tutorial said that bad things would happen if i killed it so i didn't

The boss has WAYY too much hp

I read the controls but I don't feel like that really explained what was going on, not sure what the bullets even did because they didn't damage the character regardless of current form . . .

I enjoyed this a lot!

It was a pretty well implemented game, though I would appreciate it if the game's difficulty increased with survival time because once the breakaway happened it ended up feeling a bit aimless because the failure state to purchase more items felt so voluntary.

I did end up playing long enough to obtain every item and getting the free state of mind because the feedback loop of checking out better and better items was satisfying.

The sound design and graphics were fun to look at and listen to.

It seemed a little glitchy if you let the negative thoughts cross through the center, causing spikes to appear and the fill to despawn as the model inverted on itself, the collision detection there also could unexpectedly pierce you.

The concept of your own bullets forming the bullet hell was really interesting. I had some issues with visibility on certain bullets, and it felt particularly assbackwards that the bullets that don't hurt you on rebound are specifically the ones with the spikes on them.

Some of the quotes hit pretty close to home, haha.

Clear with score of 11524!!!

I liked the theming of the bosses being mythical creatures.

The "walls that stop" attack was probably the hardest of the set for me, I kept getting hit here due to the shmup cardinal sin of "player ship having inertia" please consider not doing this in future bullet hell games. (surprisingly, this is the only game I've played so far with inertia, there's a reason it's much less common for precision dodging type games)

The cockatrice boss was a standout hit for having fun to dodge patterns, but kelpie's bubble dodging attack was a pretty close 2nd. Kelpie was the hardest boss for me by far because of the walls attack, but I seemed to have encountered a safe spot at the back on one of my attempts? (the bullets despawned before reaching all the way to the back of the screen, unsure if it consistently happens)

The charge shot felt very clunky to use because the DPS wasn't that notably higher but the punishment for releasing too early was that you don't get any shot at all. It kind of worked together with the cleaning mechanic decently well though.

The shrink maneuvre came in pretty handy for the first boss's walls with gaps attack, this felt well implemented and fit the jam theme well, but I don't feel like the iframe dash was very well implemented - most times you'd use it, you'd either run into another bullet as soon as it ends, or you're better off not using it at all and just dodging or shrinking. It's like conceptually OP so it seems like you felt the need to balance it this way, but the end result is that there are almost no actual use cases for it in the game. The only use case I found was to skip the last wave of the "walls with gaps that stop periodically" attack.

Overall super fun and pretty engaging experience though. I liked the sprites.

Racking up combo was kind of satisfying, the penalty for getting hit forcing you to get really aggressive with dealing hits as your means of attacking gets shorter and shorter range was a rather engaging concept and created real risk and tension.

The parry also felt pretty good to use, though some cool effect/feedback on parrying bullets would be nice

Hitboxes were extremely strange and the character felt too hard to control for the kind of precise dodging that was occasionally required. The fact that the character had no way to move one way while facing another made the controls kind of annoying.

Was not much a fan of the music but it was fairly competent.

The bullet hell patterning was not the most engaging, it's basically only one type of pattern and there's no contact feedback visually or sound-wise on the player getting hit, making it hard to tell what happened on initial plays, especially with how vaguely the failure condition is implemented.

Stage clear with 369566, no lives or bombs remaining LOL

Basically my favorite submission of the jam

Very touhou-ular but the slurping up of point items felt really appealing and the spritework was awesome

both bombs felt good to use and I liked hoovering up score extends from them

I loved the spritework of the bosses and backgrounds, and the bullet patterns.

The framerate of the gameplay felt kinda low and when combined with the large play area and small size of the player character and bullets it made it kind of hard for me to see at times.

I initially felt as though some of the patterns took too long but on a second play I think they lasted the correct amount of time if a little on the long side - the feeling of collecting and stacking the weapons and powerups to make the fights go faster was really good.

I was not much of a fan of the music but it definitely felt homegrown and had its charm.

After 2 attempts, cleared with a score of 1510330

Also the arcade cabinet being named "MISUNDERSTOODMAN" made me smile for some reason

Yes dude

Won with 2:48.05

Really engaging experience. initially i found it kind of annoying that you had to go up close to get the chips because the blue bullets were so lightning fast you can't really get close to pick up the chips, and in most of this kind of game the chips would fall towards you naturally, but then a few attempts in I settled into a strategy of realizing that manual bomb is actually a total misplay.

playing for time you definitely need to bomb as often as possible and learn the timings and patterns of the enemies, especially the ones who will fire blue bullets, I think that's good for a scoring game, but my survival strategy ended up being, treat the extra life as an actual extra life, leave all the chips at the end of the screen so as soon as you get hit you can run behind the shockwave while not holding fire, to go and grab some of the chips

It's almost kind of like dodonpachi float bomb, except it's float extend lmfao, that's a really interesting metagame

That was awesome

I played it again with that knowledge and TBH the game got a lot more fun

I actually did not realize that holding to shoot was a valid option, it would have made selecting the wrong powerup not be a problem at all!

Cool Idea!

Really liked the last puzzle, stumped me for a little bit.

Music was really really good, liked the visuals also.

Circle strafing being such a powerful strategy led to fairly boring gameplay, and the upgrade popup was very annoying. It also made it so that clicking to shoot would keep accidentally selecting the wrong powerups so eventually my damage scaling couldn't keep up, haha

Chill music but instructions unclear, it just sort of threw me in and I couldn't work out how to make anything do anything

This was a fun little game, managed to win by efficiently placing 1 drill + 4 turrets on each island.

CANNOT OVERSTATE how cool the glide mechanic felt to use, that worked super duper well + had just the right amount of inertia and control.

Shooting enemies yourself feels mostly worthless, there's also a bug where enemies will path to the inside of your drill and then can no longer be hit by your shots (as your shots will collide with the drill), for some reason turrets did not have this limitation.

Penalties on shop purchases felt kind of "too directly tied" to the bonuses to the point where they mostly seemed to cancel out and invalidate using the shop at all (aside from when "your health" was the punishment, because using the flight meant you couldn't really be hit at all, and you recover health pretty quickly even without that)

Overall really nice presentation though, and fun writing!

Shame about the castle puzzle being stuck, I really enjoyed the caves mechanic and the dialog. Excited to see the proper conclusion to it after the jam! The concept of the castle puzzle is really neat, and I liked how the NPCs reacted to their tiles being moved.

Extremely Solid game concept and execution, with really neat level design that doesn't overstay its welcome

I completed this with a lot of gold left over, is it an unintended solution? :'D

Really satisfying to watch solutions that go perfectly.

UX could be improved a little, though, for example ability to place multiple of a type of block without having to go back to the hot bar, or a confirmation prompt on the "delete everything" button that it's too easy to click while placing blocks (or just design levels that don't require you to place stuff near there (such as making that part of the screen a bar that doesn't interact with the rest of the game world)

Really really wish I could save and watch back solutions, immediately going to the next level and losing your prior solution forever feels baaad, I want to show my friends what I did, even if it's just "play again / go next" as an option would let me record solutions

I think some kind of "shove" system or mechanic would be good, so stuff doesn't feel so stiff and restricted, but the "space management like resident evil inventory" gameplay was an intended part of the experience

I just beat the game and I am now a skull

I just told all my friends so they can become skulls, too

It works now :)

Yes, when the game starts there is a blue number that starts at 40 and decreases to 0 very quickly

The animations of everything are playing fine, but the character doesn't move at all, I have no additional gamepads plugged in, hmm

I seem to have difficulty being able to move, I tried every button on my keyboard, can you help me?