https://itch.io/jam/touhou-fan-game-jam-13

Artist doodlebabe and I (programmer) resolved to do game jams together with the main goal of improving teamwork. So here goes Touhou Fan Game Jam 13, where we're making a bullet hell shooter. I'm not super familiar with Touhou but I do love bullet hells, having played Cotton and Deathsmiles. We've actually never made fan games before but it is pretty fun!

Day 1

This was more of a challenge than expected because I had to pick up Unity DOTS on the fly. Had is a strong word, but since I want there to be a ton of bullets on the screen, it would run the fastest with DOTS (and is a great excuse to learn it).

doodlebabe designed sprites for two characters, Sakuya Izayoi and Hong Meiling. This is her first time drawing anime characters so we are both doing something new for this jam - which is cool!

We decided on a horizontal shooter since it's different from Touhou's vertical and also works better with widescreen monitors.

Day 2

The game is staritng to shape up and we're picking up pace. Too much development time was lost due to researching and debugging Unity DOTS so I decided it was not feasible. Bummer, but regular old object pulling will be enough to handle this game. I've started really prioritizing speed of development but I just can't sacrifice optimization and general good practices, so the compromise is that my code is starting to get long and ugly in places, but it is fast and mostly manageable.

So far you can shoot, there are weapon upgrades, two times of enemies, a lives system, and invincibility. The next most important step is to implement a timeline for spawning the enemies. Then it's to implement the boss. Then I'll do everything else.

doodlebabe designed more sprites for the main character, the boss, an enemy (a mechanical bird lol), the main character's knives, and background images.