Thank you very much for playing, your feedback and your video! I'm glad you found the gameplay intuitive (and for the difficulty I intentionally held myself back a bit to make sure most jam participants can clear, glad it wasn't an issue for a seasoned player)
Regarding the drones/options circling around phase - there are several choices you can make here, though the original intention was to make this phase a yummy target for hyper's on-hit item spawning. You can stay inside or outside the circle and then use hyper at a good moment, which will cancel and seal the bullets for a short while and give you enough time to destroy one big drone and/or a few small ones, netting a lot of score and making it easy to dodge the survivors. If your hyper is not up yet then you can either keep using spread shot at pointblank or bomb once the drones begin shooting, which are the two most efficient ways to recharge it. If you can't or don't want to use hyper at all then your approach with just staying inside and using focus is totally valid too, focus shot is strong enough to destroy a few small drones and give you more room to dodge, though it's possible to stay in the middle by moving behind the big bullets as they approach in case you want to minmax the boss dps a bit.
Regarding "hyper doesnt really feel very hyper" - in your opinion, is it more of a visual/audio thing where it just doesn't feel juicy enough, or is it related to gameplay, like it's not strong enough/doesn't do enough?
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oh yea i see the hyper on that specific part that makes perfect sense!
about the hyper not being hyper its specifically just the usual cave games where u press the hyper and now your shots look angrier or something. not quite sure how to word it. daifukkatsu probably looks the most extreme for hypers feeling hyper. besides that daioujou and saidaioujou also has some beefy ones. i think even some of the touhou20 shots (mainly the hypers that gets a powered up shot) have some excellent visuals that just looks more powerful even if they arent that much more. its basically just juice yea. although the shot was most definitely much stronger with it, it didnt look to match