Played through Demo v0.2.4. Some comments on the design:
- I was unable to tell if power points stay collected after death, so I just got them every time.
- Putting finnicky instant death spikes you have to dash under near the end of a checkpoint in Mokou's stage is not great.
- I love the concept of Doremy's stage, but it feels like it might be better serviced by switching the player shot type to something more suited to shmup design (e.g., autofire while holding fire and no charge). The end of the stage in particular is an absolute clusterfuck and I got through it by just micrododging a shitload of bullets, which is not ideal. This stage in general is much harder than the rest of the content in the demo and could wall people.
- Doremy and Mokou are very easy compared to their stages; I beat the latter first try even with the transition phase. Not necessarily a problem but they felt somewhat underwhelming to me.
- Yumemi's attacks just feel kind of random and unpredictable, especially the teleportation. I just kind of fumbled my way into a win, which wasn't particularly satisfying. This could be addressed with better tells (distinct sound effects would help a lot) or by giving her more of a pattern than just selecting attacks completely randomly.
- Tenshi was the most fun and balanced boss for me. The tell for her sword slash requires paying close attention to her sprite at all times, which is a little questionable given the rest of the fight. Being able to drop a bunch of kaname-ishi in a row is also kind of silly (something else that could be addressed by not letting bosses pick attacks completely at random). Otherwise this fight was satisfying to learn and overcome.
- The Iku midboss fights could probably be nerfed somewhat, especially the second one, given that it takes place at the end of a long and non-trivial checkpoint.
- Enemies in the stages probably have a bit too much HP across the board. It gets a little old having to fire a charge shot and then wildly mash to dispatch basic kedama and fairies, and the amount of HP they have can complicate some of the platforming segments.
Overall I was pretty impressed, the game controls very smoothly and the stages are reasonably complex without turning into Kaizo design. Looking forward to see how subsequent releases will polish and expand on what's here.