This game's concept is super intriguing. The idea of a competitive TH1 is extremely fun, and I think if I had someone else to play with, it would be pretty fair and fleshed out. Alas, playing on my own was a struggle since the keys were so close to each other and it was hard to keep track of things. Also, Marisa got 0 points despite hitting things? 

Regardless, the pixelated art and the bangin' music really help make for a pleasant experience. Keep up the hard work!

That music is absolute bopping. Can we get an upload of it somewhere?

Playing this, I noted down several bugs:
- Game crashes when the entire right side is cleared of tiles, by far the most annoying bug
- The framerate is uncapped, causing the game to run too fast on my 144Hz monitor
- Player can move outside of bounds
- Portals never launch the ball left nor upward.
- Shooting the ball always tilts it towards the right. Extremely weird.
- When the ball is resting on the ground, it slides underground when slid into
- There are times where all of a player's lives will get deleted out of existence, like when the ball slides underground or it bounces inside the player(?)

- At least for solo play, the ball physics are kinda awkward. I guess it's less awkward for multiplayer?

Here's the crash message:

Error

main.lua:676: 'for' limit must be a number

Traceback

[love "callbacks.lua"]:228: in function 'handler'

main.lua:676: in function 'loadlevel'

main.lua:607: in function 'checkhalf'

main.lua:587: in function 'updlevel'

main.lua:146: in function 'gameupdate'

main.lua:206: in function 'update'

[love "callbacks.lua"]:162: in function <[love "callbacks.lua"]:144>

[C]: in function 'xpcall'

Other notes:
- Would want a restart button instead of having to reopen the game
- Showing that a character got hurt would be great. The damage is not conveyed neither visibly nor audibly.
- It can feel unfair to have P1 start scoring and P2 having wait for the chance to hit the ball. The buggy gameplay doesn't help. Maybe make the green platforms smaller or make the ball also change possessor when it gets shot enough times?
-- Bonus idea: have the ball change colour to the possessor's colour. Reimu red, Marisa yellow, Sanae green, Kogasa blue. Would be both neat and practical (to know who's the possessor)

Things I really like:
- The BGM is an amazing medley! Gets the competition going!
- Loving the stylized backgrounds. The player sprites are cute too.
- HRtP. I am simply fond of HRtP so many thanks for this game, it's fun despite of the bugs and the unpolished state. I will certainly revisit the game if you update it!

I made a video to show the timeout and the multiplayer feature.

Fun game with an interesting take on the Touhou 1 mechanics mixed with pinball elements.  The music + SFX were great! On the gameplay side, the control over the characters felt responsive and precise. and the teleportation circles were a nice touch to keep the game state fresh.

The game's got a great base! With a bit of post-jam polish, I think this game could be rounded out well. I hope you give it a shot, I'd love to play a potential update! Some feedback on that below.

The physics on the balls needs a little fine-tunning, I think sometimes the ball can get stuck in the green barrier or in the air around blocks. A couple more visual indicators like numbers in a color related to the player that scored points near the event that caused the scoring could go a long way in helping the players get a feel for how they're doing and how relatively important things are for scoring.

The multiplayer controls are quite inconvenient, as both are spread across the keyboard leaving the players' hands overlapping. I'd recommend keeping each player's controls to one side of the keyboard