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Thanks for playing!

The ending glitch seems to be caused by some kind of memory leak from the unstable 3D plugin I use, sadly. I think I might be able to fix it by changing how the game moves from section to section, but it'll have to wait for post-jam.

I feel like I'm guessing most of the time, and the lack of a journal to keep track of important details or how events will turn out after I've encountered them at least once would be a very helpful QoL feature. An options menu to adjust sound settings at least would also be nice.

But above all else, I feel the game lacks a motivation for its main objective. Outer Wilds, which I'm guessing is the main inspiration here, has the sun exploding on you at the end of a loop. Similarly, Majora's Mask has the impending moon crash. The Forgotten City also threatens the player with death/petrification if they make grievous mistake. 

What I'm getting to is that, time loop games generally give the player a very clear reason to figure out their mysteries, be it the reason for time looping itself, or just persisting the loop ourselves until we stop or circumvent the "imminent doom" part at least. It's an easy way to immerse the player into the role. 

This narrative doesn't clearly do that, so I don't feel particularly motivated to resolve the problem. So instead, I find myself trying to solve the smaller problems, but I can barely make any progress on any of them because I'm supposed to do them in a specific order, at least from what I can see.

In summary, I feel it was a major flaw in the process of making the game that a major visible threat to the player (Mizuchi)'s existence wasn't included from the beginning. Even if it is a bit cliched or forced. I was thinking something like, Reimu suddenly deciding to "Fortune Teller" Mizuchi at midnight could work, or someone else if you happen to be possessing her at the time (or not? It could be a major twist if the perpertrator wasn't who we thought it was)

This isn't to say I don't see myself replaying this. Despite all my searching, I couldn't find where KogaBanki was, and I couldn't resolve whatever issue there was with Mokou and Keine, even though I had a hunch what it was. Those are my main motivations to replay the game next time it gets a (major) update.

To end this review on a positive note, I do think the writing is top-notch and the art is very well-made.

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for playing! I originally planned to add camera controls to make it easier to tell how things are aligned, but it didn't work out as I intended and I wanted to keep the number of buttons in-game simple too (Z and X only). As for the crash, I apologize.

Selecting attribution in-game crashes it for some reason. Otherwise, it's kinda nifty as an open world game for a Jam, particularly with all the buildings that had to be done, but my fishing rod got overriden by Nazrin's camera at some point, which made me feel it needed a menu of sorts when you're given multiple "quests".

Pacing-wise, I feel it could be better. Rounds are much too slow when it's just the basic billiards gameplay, due to how little momentum the balls seemingly keep. Meanwhile, once spell cards are loaded (particularly in round 2 and 3), the game basically turns into "whose super will give them the win?". Marisa's probably got the best one overall, so it didn't make the game too frustrating to "win", at least.

That 8BitDo N64 controller I got months ago was made for this moment.

With it, I can quickly hit Tewi into the pools of water everytime.

It's aesthetically impressive, but my goodness does the gameplay feel like it's trying to give me carpal tunnel syndrome. Breaks between waves would be a godsend I feel.

Thanks for playing!

Oh my god, I forgot I had a second (dev) exit left in level 10. Gonna have to patch that out, lol.

And sorry for the crash: part of the reason why I'm moving to Godot is because of how little control I have over fixing them.

Excellent, I think my only complaints are that there isn't a reason to place Seki's head somewhere ourselves, besides in a few niche cases (that require knowledge in advance), and that Kogasa feels a bit stiff to use, if that makes any sense.

I seemingly lost control of my characters after doing a stage and trying a different one? I couldn't move the pair anymore, although I could still click on menu buttons. Not sure if it's a known bug or something I missed. I was playing the offline Windows version, in case that's important.

As many have said before, the aesthetic is impeccable, but the gameplay is hard to learn, let alone master. I also don't think it was all that necessary to have big "beams" to avoid on top of everything else.

I'd like to add, and this is really just my own opinion and has no bearing on my rating, that I don't quite think Keine and Mokou fit as the "protags" in this kind of game. I think Touhous with a musical inclination, like the Prismrivers, Raiko or the Tsukumos, would fit better without context, or even someone like Wriggle because of how some insects "dance". 

This isn't to say I didn't enjoy Mokou and Keine being used here (I could see a case of Keine convincing Mokou to try it and having to either play as Keine to teach Mokou, or Mokou having to struggle to learn), just that I think some context would have done wonders to me why the two are dancing at all, and feels like a missed opportunity.

Thanks for finishing it! For the umbrella/lantern youkais, the idea is that you can fairly easily move around their sight, and if not, then you can use Keine to temporarily "devour" them from history while you take care of surrounding threats.

I also understand that the last five levels aren't very difficult. While they were meant to be more story-focused and not as hard as the previous 5, I had to redo them because I had to cancel their actual main gimmicks, which was bunnies that the player had to block their view with events (Boulders, mostly) to move around them, and the "special NPC" using their powers to give you the object you needed to solve the room after some time. 

But no matter what I did in the code, bunnies could always see through both walls and objects, which made them impossible to deal with as planned, so I scrapped them for a gimmick that I was hoping to keep for the post-jam levels: the rolling log. The special NPC only ended up being used in the final level because it took longer to setup the effects (including its 3D model) than I expected, and was just kind of mechanically lame in hindsight (not to mention even more taxing on the engine offline).

The last 5 levels I plan to add will be more focused on challenging the player, and will also finally involve rooms that are a tad bigger than normal too, so hopefully that will be more satisfying as a finale gameplay-wise.

*Gets the yin-yang ball scissor mini-game on last life*

"I'm done for"

Browser version ran really badly on my end, not sure if it's just me. Offline version was basic but neat, although I think having to get stuff from the fridge, particularly the milk, should award more points than normal, due to how high risk it becomes later in the game.

The take-away I got from this game is that it argues that Youmu is a top, which contradicts the appeal of UdoMyon as a double bottom pairing.

(I just hoped I'd get to shoot with Reisen too, but slashing as Youmu was kind of fun and the boss fight was fair for what it was.)

Thanks for playing! That error might be because of a re-loading issue, as I've never encountered it during my testing, though I'm not surprised it happened: MZ3D is notoriously bad at parsing issues with its interaction with RPGMaker, so it often responds by crashing the whole thing. I actually avoided using skyboxes this time around just to lessen the chances of that happening! 

I should be able to fix it by adding a clause that the player is "locked" into place while talking though, and I'll be fixing whatever else I can until then too. If you ever feel like attempting the game again, you can reload from the autosave (or your own manual save if you did one), and skip to level 19 using the Level skip trick (Hold Z and X while accessing the options menu in-game).

Thanks for playing! There is a change in the ending if you get a perfect 30/30 with no retries, but it's quite minor.

Interesting narrative of Byakuren long before she even met her disciples. While I understand why each segment was written the way it was, I would have liked to see a bit more from the early part (before she went to see her brother) and how she came across magic in the first place as well.

Production of this game is still underway and will take longer than expected. It's also recommended you play "The Devil over my Heart", one of my previous games that strongly influenced this one.

You can read my notes on the main content that will be added to the game if you wish, but it might spoil the full experience for you! Sorry for the delay, and thank you for your patience!

Thanks for playing!

Thanks for playing, and thank you for lending me your music for the project!

WRONG!

CURSE OF RA!!  𓀀 𓀁 𓀂 𓀃 𓀄 𓀅 𓀆 𓀇 𓀈 𓀉 𓀊 𓀋 𓀌 𓀍 𓀎 𓀏 𓀐 𓀑 𓀒 𓀓 𓀔 𓀕 𓀖 𓀗 𓀘

(Also thanks for playing)

Monke wants music to loop

Ain't no way Satori's arm's that long.

Conceptually, I really like this, but the days pass in the blink of an eye: I basically did just 2 orders each day before stopping production, because there was effectively no time to complete the 3rd fairy's order.

Oh, sorry about that. There is normal saving, but I dislike 'forcing' auto-saves on people which is why I didn't implement them. I might add it in the future as an option though. 

Glad you liked my quiz style: it's based on Microsoft Encarta 96's Mindmaze, which let you do 2 attempts at a 4-choice question, and with no real punishment for failing them. The only thing it didn't have was explanations for the answers, which I felt were very important for a game about knowledge and why I added them in this game. It's important to explain why the answer is what it is, after all...well, except for some of the few free-win riddles I put in, of course, hahaha.

Thanks for playing!

Hmm, it should be re-looping you for another 9 rooms before putting you back in the path to the pyramid core if you do that, although I did actually think about making a "Bad End" where choosing to spare the pyramid loops you in the maze forever, so that'd be neat too (but not intentional).

Thanks for playing!

EDIT: Oh, now I see. Sparing the Pyramid Core locks it out of its dialogue trigger, making it impossible to talk to it again. Oops! I'll push out an update that fixes it real quick (1.0b)

I was wondering why my production was suddenly being massively halved after every few upgrades.

Turns out, the "10% overall bonus to all Mochi produced" actually makes it 10% of what it was before.

Dunno why, but I felt more satisfaction sneaking through passages meant for dashing a lot more than, well, actually dashing. Fun game, although I think seeing the whole area when we finish a level would be neat, as a way to show the full images (where relevant)

It feels like the game is at its hardest when tackling level 2 and 3. After those, there's enough skill points to go around that acquiring the busted 3rd upgrades trivializes the final stage.

That being said, it really is fun! Just wish there was some music too!

Put the shirt on, Alice.

Junko: "I need a suit for my daughter"

Me: Clownpiece, right?

Junko: "..."

Me: ...right?

(Also, the non-SCs often felt harder to dodge than the actual SCs)

Honestly, I really like the idea! The lack of camera control and the camo system feeling clunky is a bummer though.

Darn ghosts, just try to fit in anywhere I say! Who cares if the place is equally as cheap as it is cool? Aaaaaah!!

Yukari hats keep an active invisible hitbox somewhere near where they die that damages me even after I defeat them, and if you get damaged when reviving, Shinmy will start with negative damage and be effectively invincible (unless she falls in the water).

I also think there should be health drops...unless I'm dumb and I missed them?

Regardless, very mechanically interesting! I'd love to see more of this.

Nemuno died on the way to her home (planet).

Very fun and creative! I don't really understand where the Jam theme fits into this though.

I would have liked if the controls were different, like alternating with the arrow keys or A and D instead, or perhaps even moving the mouse around? 

Besides that, Skuykuy wants a break!

Thanks for playing! I'll be releasing a slightly extended version in a few days or so that adds some of the cut content that didn't make the original "full" release, which further explains some of the lore (like why Shinki is so often busy) and adds a few more PC98 character cameos.

Whoops, sorry, I just updated the game! This causes malfunctions for whoever was playing at the time.

You should be able to continue from where you last saved. Also, will update the credits to properly reflect your name, sorry!

Thanks for playing! The full release will be out in 1 or 2 days (3 at worst), so I hope you will check it out then too!