Neat shmup
I think my biggest issue is how chaotic the screen is. I know that’s usual for shmups but the screenshake seems rather overdone. I also think giving the player bullets a little bit of transparency and/or making them render behind all other bullets might help with the readability a bit too.
But take that with a grain of salt, my shmup experience so far is just Touhou. There the focus is far more on pretty pattern recognition than player-abilities. When I see other non-danmaku shmups it also feels a little too chaotic for my tastes.
I really like the idea of the grappling hook. And it does seem plenty usefull. Sadly I barely used it, I think the tutorial should make sure to show it off a little better. And maybe giving some more reason to swap out what your holding could make grappling hook use a little more dynamic than just grabbing the strongest thing around and keeping it.
(I do have some other things I could mention but they all boil down to ‘Touhou is different’, if you are interested in some differences that I notice do tell me)
And at last I also wanna ask about this post you made a whopping 7 years ago about a star trail shader. Just wanna know if that shader ended up complete and how good the effect ended up being. I just love Star Trails and am always looking for new possible shader techniques.
(and yes I indirectly came here via that post lol)