You're working really hard on a spinoff game you made for a short competition. I don't know if I find that respectable or a major distraction from bigger projects.

Stylistically, I think the game is great and fits the old-school theme you seem to like doing. That is, except for the particles…again. But let me tell you a few things I had major issues with:

- For a shmup, this game is incredibly slow. Now I've played a lot of shmups in my day and while most of them have been bullet hell, even the slower shooters aren't this slow. And on top of that, the stages drag on and on with you doing the same thing over and over again. No new enemies, no cool patterns, just fighting the same respawning enemies.

- You need to optimize your particles and objects, because while I may not have the best computer over here, it should definitely be able to run this game without any issues. There are no intensive effects like godrays or lighting, and I don't understand how a few blood-and-bone particles could cause so much slowdown.

Normally my attention span for shooters is relatively high. I can go hours and hours of failing and dodging bullets. But I couldn't get very far in this one. I played on the hardest difficulty and even that was a walk in the park. For that reason I don't really understand the point of a smaller hitbox, because bulletfire was so thin that you hardly had to move anyway. And on top of that, 90% of patterns could be strafed and no real dodging was required.

If I had to come up with one thing to improve, it'd be the same for Shattered World and your other games. Pick up the pace. I don't care what you do on the lower difficulties, but if I'm falling asleep on the higher difficulties, you may want to touch it up just a bit. Shmups are generally aimed at a more hardcore audience, so even though it looks like you're catering toward casuals, you're neglecting the other half for some reason.

Also, we reeeeally need to get you off of those MIDIs. Your composition is alright and I think your music is holding you back as a solo dev. Who knows? Might be a useful skill to have. Composing is one of the most fun parts for me when it comes to making games.

So if I understand you correctly, the feedback is basically:

- Make more things happen, faster, especially on higher difficulties

- Replace the MIDI music with MP3 versions of the chiptunes I make in the first place

am I right?

As for particles… you didn't complain about the gradient text on the title screen, by the way… it's just a way of adding "juicy graphical effects". There's no point about it, except making the game look prettier. Since I rotate sprites a lot (which creates blurs and artefacts, as seen below in a screenie of the 4th boss) I figured I might as well use particles, because rotating sprites instead of making separate sprites for every possible rotation degree you want to use is… cheating, non retro. At least IMO.

Increasing the tempo to fit a hardcore SHMUP player might be out of my scope, because I'm not one of them (mostly play jRPGs; I've been thru Gradius III with savestates and cleared Xeno Fighters R on the 'normal' difficulty, plus touched some other games like R-Type). I think it'd be a better idea to introduce new enemies all the time so even if you don't get challenged, at least you won't be bored.

By the way, I made a danmaku game last Christmas:

https://www.box.com/s/84qqmwlvrjdq2hgvefsr

Is the tempo in that game acceptable or still making you drowsy? Myself, I've had to include a 10-life cheat to be able to beat the final boss but I figured the person I made it for would never get that far so it didn't matter.

That's not a particle, and I figured you did what you could in limited time. But you're right; now that you're going back to this game, have a look at it, though you already seem to be well aware.

There's a difference between chiptunes and MIDIs. MIDIs in general sound pretty unfitting for your games, and I've never heard a case where MIDIs worked for a PC game. I think chiptunes would sound way better if you, for example, tried whatever Mega is using.

Don't add particles just for filler. There's a lot you have to do to make sure they fit the theme and atmosphere of your game. Performance, too. If you have a game that innately has a lot of objects, like a shmup, you have to make sure your particles aren't going to eat the FPS on slightly lower-end computers.

That's one way to do it. I guess I was complaining more about the repetitive gameplay with the same enemy types. Being forced to figure out new enemies is a good way to keep the player awake.

The tempo on that other game is good, just a little lacking in variety. I understand if shmups aren't your thing, since they appeal to kind of a niche audience. As such, you don't have to make the changes I mentioned, but it'd be nice to include a wider audience with a good difficulty range.

If you ever are interested in making something for that audience, though, I'd recommend looking at some Touhou games. They tend to range on the easier side of bullet hell while being on the harder side of generic shmups.

If you want an example of an easy bullet hell, try this video. Skip to about 1:40. This is the middle difficulty on an easy game, and you can see that it's probably still daunting to people outside the genre.

Again, if you don't want your games to be like this at all, that's up to you. These are just suggestions to give you some ideas in case you decide to pursue the shmup genre. Just remember that you're currently working with a genre that people play when they want to torture themselves, or something people play when they want to have a challenge and something to brag about. May as well go all the way, right?

Final Fantasy VII

Gwosh, that stage was more or less just a boss battle! Maybe I see bosses the wrong way… I sort of just want the boss to provide variety (and a difficulty spike) at the end of a stage, but apparently the Touhou games base the entire stage around bosses.

Playing something to tortue themselves? Hmm… okay, I should stop making shmup games. I've personally enjoyed blasting large amounts of enemies to pieces mostly, I haven't played anything past SNES shmup games, and back then… they couldn't have that many bullets on-screen at a time.

I've done some changes, by the way (not enough to warrant an update, I've only done half the things on my to-do list), since you hit the head on the nail when complaining about how stages just drag on and on.

Most importantly, increasing the speed the screen scrolls with.

Secondly, on Nightmare and Suicide, enemies spawn targeted bullets (that's called "suicide bullets", right?) when killed, and even more if they're allowed to leave the left-hand side of the screen. That means even if you shoot everything as soon as you can, you still get bullets.

After that, I've realized enemies' aim are a bit off, so a homing bullet won't hit you even if you stand still because your coordinate origin isn't inside the hitbox. I'll change that.

Another thing I'm gonna do is to make the normal Fighters (tent people) have guns on Difficult and above, and make more than one spawn at a time at higher difficulties. Maybe I'll make this level-specific so the tents spawn more and more difficult enemies on later levels?

The final stages in Touhou are always just boss battles. Check pretty much anything else for a better idea of what the stages are like. However, it's true that bosses are the main event in those games, as they usually are the ones with the most interesting patterns. Instead of going the brute force tactic (which is simply shooting down enemies and dodging fast bullets), Touhou goes for more of a strategic approach (each pattern is a mind game). It's up to you whether you want the adrenaline of shooting things down with macrododging, or a more psychological approach with weaving and micrododging.

The game I just showed you is probably the easiest game in the series, on the second easiest setting. It was designed to cater toward casuals.

I exaggerated a bit, but a lot of modern shmups are known to be brutal in comparison to a lot of other genres. The fact that you have all of your difficulties with sadistic titles made me think you were going for a hard game, which is why I was caught by surprise by the slow speed and simple patterns. I mean, for fuck's sake, everything is aimed. There's no variety and even the bosses just do the same patterns with slightly more bullets. All it takes to dodge those is strafing, and that never changes throughout the fight.

By about how much? Because this would be a good change.

Your execution is what will make or break this feature. The games I usually see with suicide bullets also have a way to counter them. For example, Deathsmiles lets you absorb them with your familiars and Fairy Wars lets you freeze them like any other bullet. If they were all targeted and enemies were constantly dying or leaving the screen, you'd get pushed off, which brings in a question of fairness.

This is a good solution, making current enemies tougher, but adding new enemies would probably be a good thing to do on top of that. More variety and such.