Hi! Thank you for your long response to my game! Let me just start off by saying that I really appreciate your thoughtful comments. I wasn't in a good place for a while but I was finally able to make a game again after a 4 year drought. This is the first game I've truly publicly published and I was a little worried to see an essay comment but I'm really happy to read what you've wrote. The frustration you've expressed is really great, obviously it means you *want* the game to be good, and that feels good to hear.
Before I address your points, I just want to state that the core principle of the game was to recreate the rising tension of Capital City of Flowers in the Sky/PCB stage 4 with the subsequent afterglow payoff.
Alright let me address your points one by one:
> Lily's damage is just slightly too low,
I didn't have time to tune this perfectly but I definitely didn't want Lily to pop enemies as easily as in a mainline game, but it's true that it's currently frustratingly "just short" of being enough. I also designed and play-tested without shooting... because I was really focused on trying to time the bullet releases with the music. Which is definitely in part as to why shooting is so weak. But I do want to put the damage in the right spot.. perhaps in the next post jam upload...
> Her unfocused speed is slightly too slow to misdirect the streams comfortably.
This is an interesting thing to think about, having the focus speed being exactly the right speed to perform in certain specific scenarios, I wasn't exactly sure how to tune this number in the first place. I almost wish I knew which exact segments you were referring to. I found using the focus pretty naturally myself at least.
> The game desperately needs a bomb
I have... a differing, or perhaps even bad opinion of bombing that has showed itself in this game. I don't like bombing. I don't like disrupting or trivializing bullet patterns and I feel like I cheated whenever I had used a bomb. And I figured, since this was going to be a 5-minute game, I wouldn't put in bombs. Since there are unlimited continues, death is intended to be the alternative "lubricant" here. Obviously this isn't a really great choice and even a little sadistic...
> Even the game-over menu is subtly off, using 'x' to continue instead of cancelling the run. It's the kind of psychological terror the Stasi would have devised to break down Touhou players, although I suspect it's entirely done on accident in this case.
Which is why this totally made me laugh. I'm sorry for making you feel that way but worryingly, part of me feels that if it led you to create that comment it was almost worth it. Yes the 'x' to continue is actually intended to subvert the bomb button. I'm really sorry. Kind of.
> Bombs are the lubricant that make such trial-and-error situations non-lethal to the player
I think I'm beginning to understand now, perhaps you were restarting upon death rather than using continues to tour the rest of the stage(?). For whatever reason I didn't anticipate that case because I'd always play through the whole stage each time (because I was always paying a lot of attention to the music sync!). And my routing knowledge came from playing through each time and reducing my continues each time. I think I'm understanding your perspective for bombs here a lot better.
> player has nothing to do during the low-intensity part of the stages
This is an interesting thing to hear, the core principle of the game was about the building tension that is accompanied by Capital City of Flowers in the Sky + stage 4, so having nothing to do is at least, partly intentional, it's meant to be a building block of the climbing action, but I had never considered that a player could feel this way about it haha. In fact I'd already planned on adding just a tiny bit more dead time in the next update...
> it doesn't matter if I dodge badly, since I can just recover before the difficult part
It looks like you've also discovered what I discovered about my game after I had already submitted it. This is an interesting place to really consider how to implement bombs because there's no death count currently, only a continue count. So a 1cc game can be rife with misses. Even purposely using them as bombs! So much for my design.
> there is no reward for chaining things together
This is an interesting thing to think about that I had never gotten the chance to get deeper into because of the jam. The life resource, is, as everyone says an interesting idea, but it certainly left a lot of room to grow. The game doesn't have a scoring system because the reward is supposed to be the experience of the music together with the bullet patterns. Within that kind of constraint, devoid of scoring... I suppose this would be a great place to earn bombs. Perhaps the life gauge could earn you resources that you could expend 1 of to bomb and 2 if you miss, and just simply not drain anymore. Or perhaps you pay 2 to continue on a miss... I definitely would want to try implementing this if I have the time, especially if I got a cool new asset for a bomb.
> The boss is undodgeable ... second phase is way too dense
Yeah. This happens way too easily with the jam numbers + rng. The current post-jam ver. should have it tuned down a lot.
I learned a lot about creating danmaku from making this game. As well as tons of new appreciation for ZUN! I've always wanted to build my own danmaku system but in retrospect I'd say it's something better off not being done in a 3-day jam. I think reading through and responding to your response has given me new perspective and also a way to try polishing the current design if I can get around to it. Thank you for reading this all if you've made it this far and I hope if I ever make some significant changes that you might find interest in giving the game another try.