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About the supposed bug in the tutorial, I actually was taking into account the second goal of killing 50 shades - when I said the game cleared the wave I meant it literally. The shade wave defeated itself, but because I hadn’t reached either the core bombing goal or the 50 shade goal, a new wave appeared so I could achieve the goal. But I can’t replicate the bug anymore, neither the empty window, so this is less helpful. Sorry.

But in that note, there’s another bug I thought I couldn’t replicate before that I found out how. In the tutorial, in any step with an enemy wave, if you take too long to defeat it the enemies will retreat into the screen without bringing another wave to replace it and I’ll get softlocked.

Unrelated but how did I mush together Chiffon with Saffron twice and didn’t notice. I totally made that up LOL? Anyway, thanks for the super fast patch, in a quick playthrough everything else looks in place!

Got some bugs to report:

• In rainbow mode, when I first hit an enemy with a bullet, the screen goes entirely dark. Though it seems that if I keep shooting and manage to clear the current enemy wave the screen returns.
• In the Simulacrum, some shade waves clear themselves when I defeat one of their members. Specially in the step in which I have to try to use core bombing. I can’t tell what might be provoking it.
• I was mashing buttons to skip through the dialogue to see if the bug repeated itself and a little empty dialogue window appeared in the top left corner. Don’t know if it has anything to do with the mashing but just noting it anyway.
• When I died against Chartreuse in a duel, my score was ranked #4 despite the above scores all being 0. In my next attempts against Chartreuse, my score always displayed in 4th place. The normal mode has working score ranking, I think.
• Also, the statistics displayed misaligned - the column with the data info (“bullets grazed, blts cleared, bursts fired,” etc.) starts in the fourth line under “STATISTCS” while the numbers themselves start on the second (“lines” if we pretend it’s a table which I don’t know whether they are). The info column also has a line skip between blts cleared and bursts fired but the number column doesn’t have any skip.
• And when I came back to the title after the duel and selected Simulacrum again, the cursor was over an invisible option under Prism Duel with the description of the Tutorial option.
• I don’t know if it’s actually a bug or not but, in the Compendium, the Twilight member with an entry is Twilight Haze, when I’ve only fought Twilight Snow.
• Also in the compendium, above the Prism Ring entry there’s a locked entry that supposedly unlocks when I beat the demo even though I’ve beaten it with all the characters in Normal mode. Oh and I didn’t unlock Hardcore mode either even though it’s not saying that it’s a full game feature.
• Not a bug, but a small suggestion: when I arrive at the boss, sometimes the Prism is in the lower part of the screen and the dialogue window covers her. Maybe reposition her when the dialogue starts?

Anyway, I really liked the demo. I really like the individual abilities, and I love the variation of the dialogue for each of the girls. I love how more direct Chaffron is, the others are “we are going to defeat you!!” and Chaffron is “I Am Going To Kill You” paired with, indeed, Death Laser Beam. I like to think she’s also trans, “not anymore. I’m Saffron now”, “Chiffon is already dead”, there’s something there right. Also, there’s an evil girl prince which rocks. I really enjoy getting to know the context further through the compendium.

Good luck with the full release!

I really liked it! Overall a really, really nice bullet hell. I liked that every level has enemies that are kind of related to the boss, color or bullet-wise, I really loved the character interactions (indigo and saffrons dialogue before saffron’s last phase took me out, I felt the same as indigo and it was funny. indigo’s comment before fighting scarlet was also very funny) and how you subtly introduced pre-stabilished relationships and dynamics (the dialogue with amber before her last phase was very interesting and done gracefully). Knowing how the group formed through the compendium was a very cool adittion too.

I felt the difficulty curve was nice (seems like something you improved as time went on, and I think it really paid off), and there were a lot of cool patterns (I liked aqua’s first phase best). I like that the stardard mode has infinite continues but penalties on cores, and I loved the idea of an insta-fail bullet and love that it’s an evil little tadpole. I have honestly no background with bullet hell besides undertale so these opinions aren’t very well substantiated but… here they are anyway haha.

If there was one thing that wanted changed in the game, without contest would it be the game over screen. I don’t know if I’m the only one running into this, but the game takes input into the retry/quit decision immediately after dying, before the game over text or even the options have appeared. So if I press Z before I realized I’ve died, I can quit the run entirely (if the invisible cursor is over the quit option). It’s happened a few times and it really soured the experience for me. Besides making it so that the game only takes a decision into the retry/quit option after they appeared on the screen, I think it would be cool if the decision selection was the kind that had you hold the button for a few moments to confirm it.

About the core bombing, I thought it was a really cool idea in theory, but as it is it didn’t work for me at all. Mostly because 70% of the time I remembered CB was a mechanic I did because the cores I wanted to collect just flew off the screen and I wished they didn’t. Again, I’m a bullet hell casual, but usually I was focused on dodging bullets while collecting cores so the cores I tried to collect would just be shot offscreen because I didn’t angle myself properly to counter the orbit. Like I said, I really like the idea - it gives a choice to the player to sacrifice spending power for bullet power if they strategize right, but because the handling of the core is so unnintuitive I found it more of a bother than anything. Maybe assign a button that activates the orbiting, keeping one core orbiting the player while the button is pressed, and releasing it from orbit when released?

Speaking of cores, I would agree that they kind of mix with the enemy bullets. The flashing helps but not much, specially when dodging can depend on split second discernment. Couldn’t the color of the cores be indigo, as it’s the player color and contrasts well with the orange?

About Prism mode, I really like the addition of an easy mode for story purposes, but I’m not so hot about the execution. It completely disincentivizes any interaction from the player, making it just the dialogue but still including the in between challenges - none of which will be interacted with by the player. I think a better compromise for someone that wants to experience the story but doesn’t want to commit much to getting better could be made than just straight up invincibility. For example, you could double the amount of hearts, and/or raise speed of the burst charge, and/or refill hearts after retries and beginning of levels, and/or remove the core penalty, and/or slow enemy bullet speed. Basically make it much harder to die instead of impossible.

One thing: the compendium mentioned a “life burst”- is that an actual mechanic, or just lore? By testing I can’t tell if I successfully resurrected or bursted right before the bullet hit me. I’ve also let a burst after death that didn’t resurrect me (is that what the achievements call “Death burst”? the compendium doesn’t mention it) so i don’t know if the window for resurrecting is just really small.

Small things about the gameplay: Violet’s second attack sometimes has unreacheable safe spots. For example, if the only safe spot is at either end of the arc, as the arc grows out and downwards the safe spot moves outside the screen. Saffron’s first attack’s bullets can leave the screen before redirecting onscreen, which makes it hard to predict their path. In scarlet’s level the bullet that starts big then explode into a circle of little ones (from the orange) ghosts can spawn offscreen, making them completely umpredictable if you’re near them. Also, the burst sometimes does not clear all bullets as it expands. Can be bad if i’m near a swarm of bullets, use burst to clear them, and it misses them. And a suggestion about the locked modes: say what they are haha. I think you would only gain from saying what are the game modes one could get by buying the DX.

Oh, and two bugs (web version): I got the compendium completion achievement when i didn’t complete it. I had all but the two entries under prism scarlet, for context. Also, indigo’s compendium entry has her name as “TBD”.

Anyway, thank you for the awesome treat! Best of luck with the sequel, hope you keep it up.