Concept wise, I like it very much. I think this is one of the more ambitious submissions here and I think you did a very good job coming up with various mechanics here; really like the the shooting mechanics overall.

But I think the game is a little bit buggy. Several that I found (Browser version):

• Changing from particle mode to wave mode changes all particles on screen into high-damaging waves instantly. Is this intentional? I have got a feeling that it's not since it's too OP
• I think I got stuck when I tried to toggle skip scene
• I refreshed it after I got really stuck and then... when I tried the first stage again it was kinda buggy. The order of the scenes seems to get messed up

And then some design decisions I would like to question/give tips on:

• Do you think you can have a better way of introducing your game aside from using texts? Personally I think it's much better if information like how to play is conveyed without the need of lengthy texts
• Why did you not add any sound effects? I think your game could feel way more polished had you added some SFX
• Don't you think Skill Tree, and all the other stuffs in the menu, are a little bit too ambitious for a month long game jam? When making a game in the span of just one month, it is impossible to include every feature you want; but I think that in the future it is wiser to simply put SFX instead of putting all of those features. Don't get me wrong; I like the skill tree, and I think it is extremely impressive; but imho you should've spent some more time polishing your game

Btw I might've missed it in the tutorial, but I can't seem to activate the warp skill properly? Is it not LShift + Space?

P.S.: Also... this I think is just my preference and you may want to take it with a grain of salt but... I think the Magical Girl art kinda makes her look like a male... You may want to make her face rounder ;_;

Very fun writing and characters, albeit the occasional grammar mistake. The tutorial/text dump was also pretty overwhelming. I greatly enjoyed the concept of converting the bullet type even mid flight. Art for the visual novels is good, so much that the player sprite looks kinda lame in comparison. I didn't find much use for the space warp tunnel, though the effect looks very good.  Excellent work, I'm excited to see it develop!

The gameplay is pretty solid. I’m not sure how I feel about the scroll wheel aiming, since it only gives you 8 directions anyway. The abilities are pretty good and were necessary for me to beat the game. I especially like the wormhole one.

My biggest gripe is that there aren’t any sound effects. In shmups you’re often focusing on your own ship/character, so sound effects are really helpful because they let you know that your bullets are hitting something, or help you react to different bullet patterns.

Art is nice, it’s clear that there are multiple art styles but it doesn’t get distracting.

Good polish, nice job overall. I almost gave up playing due to the mousewheel aiming though. Changing it to tohouh doesnt help since my mac laptop doesnt have num keys lol.

The game is pretty good, just needs a bit of polish here and there.

The game loop is there, you definitely have a complete game. The art is pretty nice, the chibi girl is really cute looking. Music is pretty good too has a fantasy feel to it. 

If squash and stretch could be added through code to the portraits whenever they change from one image to another, that may add a bit of life to them. The magical girl could use a bit more animations and or some kind of procedural ones that add some overlapping animation for things like the cloth and the ponytail, will make it look more dynamic/alive. 

Audio and visual feedback could also use a bit of work. When the waves/bullet hits the player and or the enemy, there should be something shown visually or a sound should play to indicate that the reaction. There is already red flashing on the enemies on hit, but maybe it needs a bit more.  Things you can consider adding are things like stuttering, particle effects, Hit sounds, screenshake/sprite shake.

Scroll wheel controlled aiming is a bit awkward, might be nicer if the aim is tied to direction of where the cursor is.

Other than that, the game is pretty good, as brought up at the start of the review/feedback.

I think the best way of summing this one up is short but very sweet.

It's definitely the most polished game I've seen in the jam so far and will probably remain that way, with well-done menus, fantastic attention to detail, and an air of professionalism in everything. It's also the best use of the themes I've seen so far; they're implemented into the gameplay and in a way that makes a ton of sense. The music is excellent, the graphics are very nice... yeah, it's really hard to find fault here.

The mechanics there's less I can say about because I don't really play bullet hells. This one didn't make my eyeballs bleed which is good (bullet hells give me eyestrain, I have no idea why). They were decent, and like I said the use of themes was pretty cool. Scrollwheel aiming worked better than I thought it would, though I still didn't think it was great. I did, however, run into major issues with movement in the mouse control scheme. Mouse movement only felt vaguely correlated with character movement; it would lag and randomly speed up and slow down. I'm assuming this is a bug- I'm using Chromium Edge 89.0.774.54 if that helps track it down.

While I liked the VN-ish dialogue sections a lot more than I thought I would, they still felt excessively long and it was pretty intimidating to be introduced to all the mechanics at once. I think this would be less egregious if the game was longer overall, but I would have preferred a slower, steadier introduction interspersed with gameplay sections.

I can tell from all the dummied out stuff that this is an ambitious project. It's very short- honestly, really kind of a tease it's so short, it ends just as it gets going- at this point but there's a lot of stuff greyed out and laid out. I'm definitely looking forward to future releases!

Since you noted on Discord that it might be awhile for the final release, I went ahead and tried the current version.

First off, really great menu and title screen! Gives a great first impression, tons of options, all slick and professional looking. I tend to neglect this in my games... this menu makes me want to try harder.

The artwork in game is nice! I like the character sprite in particular. Her "defeat" is hilarious! (I saw it plenty of times, even in baby mode).  The backgrounds combined with the sprites give a cartoon look that I like. The brightness of the colors don't bother me, but it is maybe a little busy during the dialogue scenes. My only thought/suggestion there would maybe be to dim everything during those parts, except the dialogue and big character portraits? Even just a touch might help. Kind of like what it does when you access the "pause" screen, but only on the stuff behind the story elements.

The music was all great, enjoyed that a lot!

The tutorial was thorough, but it was a tad confusing at times. I really had to get into the game to "get" it. But I still prefer this to a controls pages, so it's a plus. The dialogue was good, but maybe a little dense/long. Story-wise, I'll need more to really judge it... but it's off to a good start! One other tiny nitpick on the story scenes, the whole dialogue box blinked every time I advanced text. Hardly a huge issue, but it did catch my eye.

The gameplay was solid and enjoyable, even though I stink at it! I'll admit, I have VERY little experience with bullet hell. I played Ikaruga years ago, and gave up on the first stage I think.

The mechanics were interesting. At first, I barely used them, but with practice they did become helpful. The tunneling in particular I used a lot. I found the "wave" attack only useful on the bees, but perhaps it continues to be of use in later levels. One thing that took a lot of practice was using the mouse wheel to aim... I got better at it, but can't say it felt natural. I would have preferred just using the mouse pointer to aim. However, I didn't realize that there might be a control scheme I like better until after completing the demo. I did go in for another round with a different one selected, but the game crashed at that point. (Ok, I did go back and try one other control setup on a fresh start, but it still required the mouse wheel. I did way better on the second run though!)

I'll definitely be back to play the full version. Looking forward to it!

This is the most complete game I've played so far, and I have to say, it's nice to have a proper tutorial! All the elements are there as well. I like all the extras in the menus, all the settings and all the options like skipping cutsceens. And an OST with several themed songs (nice!)... It just makes the game have so much more depth to it, even if seemingly inconsequential. From the gameplay side of things, I think both difficulty modes were nicely balanced. It was quite relaxing on casual, reasonably more difficult on hardcore, it's what you'd expect and I like that aspect. The game design was well planned out and I though it was also executed well.

Still, some combat elements may need adjusted in future updates. Some moves don't behave as you might hope (like the teleportation not having a momentary shield or a tweened slow motion to cover the player against projectiles whose velocity they cannot determine), and the wave attack's dubious usefulness except in certain circumstances. Also regarding other aspects, while it's nice to see another game really try and tackle the theme element of the jam, perhaps this is too pronounced in things like the tutorial (and throughout the game) that it was hard to figure out what it meant—this confusion being resolved after properly starting the level and testing every button, it still felt like I left the tutorial knowing less than I though I did when I looked at the control map initially. The most concise reason for this feeling: too much text. Too much dialog intermixed with not enough gameplay made me forget the controls I was being told whilst trying to absorb to the story as it came along. In general, tutorials are far less important than gameplay so this is not any major detriment to the game, but since the tutorial has actually been implemented to this degree it is worth noting.

The story is hard to judge without more content, but the set up is there and it looks like it will be quite nice. Given how much effort the developer clearly continues to put into the game, I have no doubts it will also be substantial. "The setup is there" really is the best way to put a lot of things positive about the game, but on top of that 'the actual game' is there too. It's just really nice to see that planning... it comes through on every element. And the fact the team were able to pull through on delivery, even if there's still more they wanted to add (think of it as DLC, no?) , it's still quite fun even at this stage, so really nice job on it.

nice little 2d shooter, little confused on the controlling but I eventually got it, though I could not do everything because I don't have a mouse (laptop user here), a nice game none the less.

okay, I’ll say the UI Art and portrait is good, but the game itself hurt my eye, the color of the background seems to have very high saturation. and in the chaos of bullets, I keep losing sight of my own characters, especially in focus mode.

Next, the tutorial, It’s nice that you have tutorial dialogue, but It’s a bit much of an info dump,

Most of the word just means nothing to me especially when the player doesn’t even know what they’re getting into, now the stage start, and holy damn why is the first stage so difficult. the enemy is just never gonna die, I have to go upgrade the heavy quark so can stand a chance.

and every time I die I have to see that mascot tell me stuff again, I could skip but I still have to follow it’s instruction when it tells me to move around, There’s also one time I skip the dialogue, It somehow also skip past the part where it tells me to try to move around, I thought that’s great until I beat the stage and it shows me dialogue that supposed to show after you move around as it said, And after that, I’m just stuck there and the stage isn’t finished, so I retry again, this time it works properly.

There’s also other bugs, When I used teleport sometimes it forces me to move forward and I lose control of my character for a while and I go straight into a bullet multiple time so I’m kind of hesitate to teleport at all.

There’s a lot of ability you could use which is great there’s an approach you could take when fighting, And the dialogue is funny I think, The upgrade is great I like how the UI and character looks

The mechanics are awesome, although a bit tricky to understand at first. My only gripe is that the clouds really obscure the enemies up there. Overall really solid, I ended up replaying the tut a couple of times because  I really love the mechanics