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I feel like Tewi's second attack might be a bit unbalanced: I often get really walled. It's harder than anything else in the game (on Normal).

Charge attack feels too slow to be fun to use. Maybe if the player could fire while charging, but then there'd be no downside to just charging up just in case (and release before reaching 100% in case the charge was not needed). Maybe just let the player charge more quickly and balance the game around that. It also wasn't clear to me how or if the post-charge state has any scoring or survival benefits.

The top of the screen location of the charge meter confused me. I couldn't even find it at first. Swapping boss hp bar and charge bar location would be more in-line with a touhou player's expectation, but maybe you need the boss HP bar to be easily visible so the player can time boss kills for cancels?

Also, not sure about the shot customization. I spent my points in the unfocused shot to make the stage sections more fun, but then I felt tempted to dodge boss attacks unfocused and rammed into bullets as a result. Sure, it's my fault, but the customization system kind of incentivizes this and I suspect the game would be better without the ability to spec into focused or unfocused to not tempt players into min-maxing this and thus feel like they should only use half of their shot type.

I played the latest version, and I the game just ended after beating Reisen. Since jam games can sometimes be buggy, it's good to signal that the game was supposed to end there with a small 'YOU WIN' screen or something. It felt abrupt and unintended, as if the game ended mid-fight. A more obvious climax/final spell might also have helped to round the game off.

Also, Reisen's first attack comes out too quickly after her dialog, but you know this you danmaku troll.

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yes. most of this is kinda just game jam jank & jank balance, but its still valid complaints and i agree, this would be more an explanation of the process than justifying/defending (and i do also appreciate the complaints (all of them), since its just stuff i might have missed and are very fixable).

the reisen attack was intended though, it has to do with what her last dialogue is, its kinda just a joke attack, its still probably a bit over the top and very unfair.


both the upgrades and the charge mechanic are pretty much failed mechanics, but there was not really any reason to just start over planning halfway in when i realised this.

the charge stuff is more or less a failed mechanic, but i suppose the 50% charge would be what you want to use to slow down the pace especially on bosses. theres 3x charge upgrades that will also speed it up.

i felt like the top of the ui was very cluttered to look at with the boss bar as well up there, and since you would probably be looking near the bottom when dodging big pressure anyway, it was a nice place to put it when youre about to blow up the boss as well. youre definitely right about player expectations though. (the real solution would just be to put the boss bar at both the top and the bottom?)


i suppose one solution to most of this could be like an infodump menu that explains the mechanics, and like a pause tip for the boss attacks (like the tewi 2 attack was meant to be fought around the center of the screen vertically, except on lunatic, would be a good ingame tip i think).

i very much wanted to avoid a UI hell situation more than it already is, so the only ui stuff for the upgrades is just the tooltip at the bottom, and the icons giving them a bit of identity so you can find them a bit quicker.


regardless with that many notes i hope it was at least relatively fun.

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It was fun! Sorry if that wasn't coming through. Your games basically always display a good sense for fun danmaku and  I've come to expect solid (but a bit janky) STGs from you, to the point that I even  forgot to mention that I had fun in my comment. Really sorry about that. I'll say it once again clearly: the game is fun!

Regarding Tewi's second spell: I just replayed the game and I can see how being higher up helps. I think the balls just come out a bit fast for it too feel comfortable to be that close to the boss, but in hindsight, it's probably preferable to deal with that rather than the walls further down the screen.

Thank you for the game, and thank you for the detailed reply.