I'm yet unable to clear the 3rd boss, but I think I'll keep trying. It's a fun game, one of my favorites this jam, and it wouldn't be as dear to me if it wasn't this challenging.

The slowdown generally makes the 3rd loop more playable. In particular, I think the middle room in the 2nd set of rooms during loop 3 would have been very difficult without it. (It's still a bit volatile, but the player can simply dip in and out of the room until they get a good pattern.)
However, the slowdown during the 3rd boss is excessive enough to interfere with my enjoyment. Especially during the 3rd spell, the game runs so slowly that it is hard for me to judge how early I have to move to have time to move out of the way of the bullets. I have never cleared that spell, but it's partly due to me losing too many lives on the 2nd boss to get into the final boss with enough lives: on a good run, it should definitely be doable, so I don't think the game should be made easier. It'd just be nice if the difficulty wasn't in part due to the slowdown. (Obviously, large parts of the game would have to be rebalanced if it ran at full speed, so you may be stuck in a local minimum here.)

Also, it would be good if the game killed you after the time bonus reaches zero. The way I understand it, the scoring system is meant to reward you for being fast, since the score you lose every time unit generally is greater than what you could gain from just killing enemies. However, since the score loss due to being slow is capped, you could theoretically ignore it and farm enemies indefinitely for infinite score (and lives?).

I've talked a lot about what I don't like, but it's because the game is so good that I can list its flaws in just a short comment. Please keep up the good work!

This is fun! I was waiting to play this until after the scoring update, but I couldn't really wait any longer, could I?

I love the idea of taking the VS game characters and giving them more fleshed out spell cards. More like this, please! You did a good job of capturing the feeling of Enoko's attacks, and you've generally got a good sense for balance and playability. Apart from the Ice Fang spell, there is nothing too spicy. The final spell is really fun.

Perhaps the game is a bit too accessible for my taste. It's hard to please everyone with just one difficulty level, but the game is short enough and has enough bombs for everyone to make it to the end almost no matter their performance, so I think you could have upped the difficulty slightly. Or even better: make the game longer, but I understand the limitations of a 3-day jam.

Since there are no special mechanics this time around, is it even possible to get two stars? Bombing gets you down to one star, same as just failing the spell by getting hit.

I love how polished the game looks. Some of it simply due to Danmokou being awesome, some of it due to you all being awesome.

Enoko <3

Victory!

Any chance of a Linux version? For some reason, Godot 4 games seem to really don't work with WINE for me.

I feel like the spirits got in the way more often than not, but it's easy enough to banish them so I don't mind.

Not as hard as I expected, but I'm sure not getting that <15 deaths ending any time soon.

Great game! One of my favorite so far this jam. There are a few minor flaws, like perhaps a short grace period where you can't dash after resetting a level, or a short timer after bonking your head before the glide starts to consume meter, but these were rarely issues since the levels weren't that strict. My biggest complaints is probably the waterfalls feeling overly strict, since not being able to dash at all is a matter of life and death, but that's also a minor complaint since the levels are short and the game is fun enough that I don't mind dying and playing some more.

Stage 3 took me quite a while to solve compared to the other early levels, but the difficulty curve otherwise seems good.

I personally did not mind the retelling of the familiar myth; it's been a long time since I've read it, and someone else putting words to it makes it different.

Thanks! This is wild.

Unfortunately, it barely works for me: it keeps switching focus to the body part windows in a way that takes away control from the main window, resulting in me being unable to move Mayumi most frames. The behavior is probably window manager dependent. I'll see if I can figure out a way to make it work for me.

Nice concept. Also, nice true ending.

Just needs a hitbox indicator and it'd be a perfectly serviceable jam shmup, although short and a bit bare-bones, patterning wise. It looks good and controls well, although I didn't find any opportunities to use the flamethrower.

I reached the west! (The terrain to the east stops rendering as you reach the west side of the screen, for some reason.)

It feels nice to play, but the game doesn't do much.

One of my favorites so far this jam. I don't really know what I'm doing, but it seems best to avoid annoying fairies like Cirno or maybe Eternity, and go full offense (bomb CD being my favorite, although surely it reduces the CD, rather than adds to it?) I would go for more pierce and spread (both ammo and max power), if not for the game's one glaring flaw:

Kaguya doesn't seem to time-out. For score, it's best to just milk fairies and ignore her. In that case, you want to avoid having too much spread and pierce, so you don't accidentally hit her.Since the bomb has such a short cooldown, milking is relatively easy. Please consider adding a timer or something to prevent her from being milked indefinitely, as it feels against the spirit of the game and renders otherwise useful power-ups undesirable. It's such a minor flaw, this is nearly a 5/5 jam game, but right now, I couldn't recommend it. Please don't leave it in this unfinished state.

Any chance of a Linux version? It doesn't seem to run in WINE.

I love how you used the gameplay segments to illustrate Marisa's aging. It made me sad to witness have powers decline. Mortality is a terrible thing. It was super effective.

On that note, it was a bit disappointing to not have dialog options to turn Marisa immortal. I know it would have missed the point of the game, but the options I had went completely against how I felt. Although I've only gotten ending C, so I may be missing something. Maybe Enoko decided to save her from her foolishness in the other routes? I hope so, and I may be replaying the game to find out.

The gameplay is both really cool (3D shmup where you can shoot in all directions and the default orientation changes along the course? I've never seen that, and that's interesting!) and kind of meh. I tried to go for a no-miss run to get another ending, but a bullet sniped me and I didn't feel motivated to try again since there is a lot of downtime. Having the dialog be unskippable is not great for alternative endings.

Echoing some of the other comments, the hitboxes felt big enough that the best option was to macrododge most of the time. There were a few points (I think the 2nd last wave of stage 3?) where you kind of get trapped if you don't know the enemies are about to fire a huge wall at you.

To summarize, I think the game succeeds in conveying what was intended, and the gimmicks employed were effective. It just needed a bit more polish.

no more pong

Won't some kind otter give this turtle therapy!

Beautiful game! The platforming is a bit rough, tough.

Spoiler: Antonblast gets released before 40XX

This is a serious contender for the cutest game. And what a twist!

On the 3rd loop, there is no dialog shown, so the final room is a soft-lock.

We stand not on the shoulders of giants, but a pile of corpses. It's cute, so don't worry about it...

Pretty and functional 3D game, which seems to be a rare for these game jams. Your wide range of talents continue to amaze me. The second level was hardest and most time consuming, since it usually took me a few deaths before I got a reliable platform on the wall-spikes. Given how short it is, the later levels could have been harder, but I'm not sure how you'd create interesting levels with the limited interactability of the corpses. Some conveyor belts to move them around, perhaps?

Cute! I just wish there was more.

Okuu strong!

Really polished look and feel! As someone who never got into hard platformers, I expected to spend quite a bit of time on this game, but it ended up being relatively easy, about 10 minutes to clear. The room I had the most trouble with was the "timed guillotine room", with the canon room being a distant second. Regarding those rooms, I don't think the vertical movement through wall jumping felt that fluid, compared to similar games. Too much horizontal movement compared to vertical, I think? It takes quite a few jumps to scale a wall. I'm not sure if this is a complaint or not (limiting player movement options is not bad, obviously, or we'd be flying in every game), but it might be related to why I struggled with those levels.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to run on Linux (with WINE). Would it be possible to get a Linux version? I've not played much picross, so I figured this would be a good opportunity.

Error messages below, in case they are useful.

0088:fixme:hid:handle_IRP_MN_QUERY_ID Unhandled type 00000005
Godot Engine v4.1.1.stable.official.bd6af8e0e - https://godotengine.org
0128:fixme:powermgnt:PowerCreateRequest (000000000081ECE0): stub
Failed to enable screen_keep_on.
Vulkan API 1.3.242 - Forward+ - Using Vulkan Device #2: NVIDIA - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti Laptop GPU
0128:fixme:win:RegisterTouchWindow hwnd 000000000001006E, flags 0 stub!
0128:fixme:avrt:AvSetMmThreadCharacteristicsW (L"Games",000000000081EDE0): stub
0128:fixme:avrt:AvSetMmThreadPriority (0000000012345678)->(2) stub
wine: Unhandled page fault on write access to 0000000000000000 at address 00000002282AA452 (thread 0144), starting debugger...

Unhandled exception: page fault on write access to 0x0000000000000000 in 64-bit code (0x000002282aa452).
0184:fixme:dbghelp:elf_search_auxv can't find symbol in module
0184:fixme:dbghelp:x86_64_find_runtime_function RunTime_Function outside IMAGE_DIRECTORY_ENTRY_EXCEPTION unimplemented yet!
winedbg: Internal crash at 00000002C74CFEC0

Eika can gain infinite height beyond the camera limits by repeatedly placing and spawning at polyps. However, there doesn't seem to be any stones up there. Thanks for making the game, it was fun! I am a 20/20 stacking godd.

A nice audio-visual experience, if not a game. Your music is fantastic and the look of the art amplifies the feel of the game.

For future players: It's kind of like cookie clicker but in Hell. The game does not go on forever. Keep clicking! Every click is recorded by your computer and is a meaningful step towards Aya's happiness. The fox knows you better than yourself and will make you happy.

Probably the best danmaku game this jam, and one of the best games in general. The patterns are fun and reasonable to dodge in a blind run for a Normal mode player. I didn't really get the switching mechanics, but I was able to beat the game with just Marisa, and it was fun even without switching.

Unfortunately, I suffered from some occasional slow down, and I think Marisa's unfocused movement speed might be too slow, in general? If not for the slow down, I would probably have played around with it some more to go for a low-miss clear.

Not only is the danmaku great, but the art and music is also a real treat, too. Great job!

Looking forward to it!

I liked the game up until Peerless Wind God. Why the unkillable fairy spam? It's a cool game up until that point, and I really enjoyed the gun juggling.

If Doremy was supposed to give me a hint, I wasn't prepared for it and I didn't manage to read it. In the end, I teleported to a fair under the arena and fell into an endless void. Since there is no save system and I don't feel like replaying the entire stage just to grind Aya again, this is far as I go.

This is really cute. Grazing to fill up meter is nice, but I wish I didn't have to mash shoot to maximize damage, and that my mouse cursor was bigger. Those are my only real complaints: everything else is nice. If you ever get to releasing a full game based on this, I'll play it for sure.

This might be my favorite fenny game to date. You've put your typical quirkiness to good use here, and it all ends up feeling natural rather than weird. A+ concept.

It's a shame about the placeholder art. It could have been a 5/5 game jam kinetic novel that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to anyone.

What's in there is getting close to perfect. Now, the only thing the game really lacks is clearer death animations.

Got any instructions for how to compile the game on Linux?

This is nice. My only real complaint is the cursor being hard to see. It makes it hard to aim and hard to even select things on the main menu.

Update: I just found and beat the Lunatic difficult. That's a nice extra piece of content, but maybe a bit hard to find?

One of the best games this jam. It was a blast playing through it. I found it quite easy, but the presentation is good and it all feels nice and fast-paced to play, so I got into the 'gaming zone' where I didn't really care if I had to use my brain or not. Just swooshing between puzzles, pressing buttons to make bunnies go go go. I'm grateful for the fast-forward feature.

Still, it might have been nice to have some more difficult post-game puzzles. As it is, I can't really tell if the concept has a potential for difficult puzzles. Maybe adding things like switches that the bunny can trigger, moving parts, a second bunny that the bunny can collide with would do it? Something to make the game state more complicated than just the bunny's current position and direction. In any case, at ~30 minutes play time, it doesn't overstay it's welcome while still being a satisfying chunk of game with an impressive amount of mechanics and assets for its length.

Clear time for my first run:

Every piece of this VN is top quality, and its brought together into a coherent whole in a way that's rarely seen in a jam game.
It's pretty much perfect. It feels like it's a story you really wanted to tell, brought to life as the most professional looking VN I've ever seen. The scope is just right, too: it does everything it needs to establish a new ship and then it brings it all together into a satisfying climax of visuals and music.

Just incredible.

The intro is so cool. Is this the power of Danmokou?

I think the game is solid. The slow-down powers make a lot of sense here, as do the magnetism. As a fellow Horned Owl and Bat fan, I can get behind the Tojiko/Sakuya team. However, I don't think the magnetism mechanic is that deep, and it was a missed opportunity to not let it carry over between boss attacks to add some strategy.

Pattern wise, the game isn't as inspired as "Yukari's wonderous Icy Patterns" (few games are - I really liked that one). It's pretty easy overall, the later non-spells are basically all dodged in the same way. The first spell forces you to move away from the zone where you can deal damage without magnetism, which is probably intended to force you to use the mechanism, but it still makes for slow spells and I don't find the attack interesting enough to warrant this. (At least during the spin cards you can relatively safely attack Yuuka from behind to stack up that sweet magnetism.)

Still, I'm glad we got another CKenshin shmup.

Glad to see this got an update. Great update, too!
This is my favorite game in the jam so far. I've been doing a few runs every day. It's just really fun.

Best run so far (before the beta 2 update): got a few waves with onis. Mid 10s.

Best (and only run after the update): Wave 22.

The ending screen already makes a big difference in letting the player track their progress. You could probably add some more stats and maybe keep track of various high scores to make it an even more complete experience.

Favorite weapon: Desert Eagle. After the initial mayhem of a new wave (where the gohei works wonders), this is my go-to weapon for cleaning up. The long range and decent damage per bullet makes it feel like every hit matters, and it almost never needs to reload compared to the higher power guns. I feel like the shotgun and machine gun probably need a slight buff to be at least as good as the deagle.

For some reason, the sound doesn't work and the game seems to be running slower than intended. Playing on Linux Mint 21.1 through WINE version 8.9-staging.

Even at like 30-50 FPS, it's really hard to dodge.

I don't think I quite got the game. It could partly be due to me underestimating the reach of my sword, perhaps? How do you build bullet deletion meter more quickly? Since most bullets originate from the boss, even deleting the bullets doesn't give much opportunity to do damage.

I would probably be more motivated to give it another chance if it ran well on my machine. Maybe consider a linux export? There seem to be a lot of cool ideas and I do love Shoot the bullet style puzzle attacks, so I'd like to be able to give the game an honest chance.

I can't get past Momiji. Nitori deals 2 damage and is basically only good for using items to keep Hina alive. Tube Yogurt and MP items are useless at this point since nothing inflicts status ailments and none of my attacks use mana, so all I can do is pray that I get healing items. The fish fillet increases my max MP, which is again useless; the golden fish just runs away. I haven't gotten any gear upgrades in many runs and I thought the game finally activated some "a lot of money" cheat mode for me, but it's probably just trying to print more decimals than it can fit.

I really wanted to get further to see if I would get to see Wakasagihime in your art style (which, rocks by the way), but I can't take this anymore.

The visuals are good and the beast realm setting makes a lot of sense. I wish there was more!

I found it a bit difficult to understand the game. Being in a straight line with the pincering units to me reads like "being on the straight line passing through both pincering units", but it seems like it's enough if they are in a straight line to any of the two pincering units? Or even any units participating in the attack? (Not just the pincering units?) I accidentally activated like half my arm one turn. and I have no idea how that happened. Are straight diagonals also straight lines?

The tutorial doesn't really teach you what constitutes a turn, since there is no enemy movement to break up your turns. I thought I might be able to move all my units until I ran out of meter, but you can only move one unless you use the swap mechanics?

This is the first game like this that I've played where the path you drag your units between the initial and final square matter, so that's interesting.

Since I have no idea how the enemy will move, it's hard to have any long-term strategic goals. I can only think about the current turn since I have no idea what the board state will be after the enemy moves.

Despite not understanding the game, I won, so it was a bit unsatisfying. I probably learned more about the game by writing this and reflecting on my experience than by actually playing.

It probably is a polished experience if you're already familiar with terra battle, which seems like a sensible thing to priority if you're a terra battle player yourself. Hopefully my comments can help you understand how the game might feel for a new player. Good luck with further developments!

Perhaps urgent bug report:

I get a new player ID every time I boot up the game. Personal Best is also not stored between sessions. Using the Linux v1.1.0 version. If I were to keep playing, the leaderboard would get flooded with different c2019 entries.

Update:

Looking at the files in the PlayerPrefs directory

~/.config/unity3d/CROW'S NEST/CRIMSON FANTASIA

it seems like they were last modified several days ago, when I played the old version. I don't find any saved files that would have been created by the new version in any other sensible location, nor does the new version appear to find these older saved files?