Hm. My bullet hell skills must have rusted too much to Normal 1cc this game on my first try. Did the first three stages no problem, two continues on stage 4, and did stage 5 no problem. This is what no-longer-playing-Touhou for 6 months did to my skills... huh... m(_ _)m
Well done on the arts and musics -- both are not bad at all.
Also love some of the attack patterns here... I have got a feeling you really have taken a liking on EoSD's stage 4 lol. Some enemy attacks in stage 4 really reminds me of the green-bullet-shooting books (which to this day still give me nightmares T_T), and I think the slow bullets in stage 3 is kind of reminiscent of Patchouli's Fire Sign "Agni Shine" which you encountered playing as Reimu A...
A few comments on the gameplay. If I remember correctly you were trying to make a bullet hell game, right? And more specifically Touhou bullet hell? If that's indeed what you were aiming for, there are several problems:
- The bullets move way too fast and not dense enough for that genre imo. With that bullet speed and density, there is no need for hitbox indicator; because there is no need to hyperfocus on the player character (in fact it is much better not to when the bullets are that fast)...
- Also with regards to the bullets, make them flashier and more beautiful next time. Touhou's bullet hell patterns are arts :D
- The character also feels too slow -- it's so slow that I don't even need to use the LShift button at all. Focus mode in bullet hell games is for micrododging extremely dense bullets when moving without focus mode is just too fast. At this point this game is not really bullet hell SHMUP but just regular SHMUP but harder. If this is what you were aiming for there is nothing wrong about it though... but if you are aiming for bullet hell, the experience is definitely very different.
- Is there a reason why the continue sends you back to the beginning of the stage? This is a quite odd design decision imo; Touhou 11 and 12 are among the most hated Touhou games mainly for this reason -- and those Touhou are still more merciful because despite sending the players back to the beginning, they have unlimited continues as a tradeoff.
- I actually love the idea of putting L, S, and W shot types BUT... practically they seem to do the same thing it seems. They cover about the same area and they do the same damage. In other SHMUPS those different shot types have different functionalities: usually 1 for small-area-high-damage attack, 1 for wider-area-but-less-hurtful attack, and 1 for homing. Other possible shot types are burst attacks that shoot high damage attacks but only occasionally (e.g. rocket launcher), high-damage but inaccurate attacks, and close-range attacks among other things. Just some food of thoughts to consider the next time you make a SHMUP game (bullet hell or not) with shot type power-ups like this one in the future
- Let me tell you something... aimed shots are very easy to dodge when you know the trick. The trick is called "streaming" -- this is a SHMUP technique where after the enemy shoots you only move very slightly to dodge it; done properly, a machine gun of aimed bullets will trail behind the player. Vast majority of this game's bullet patterns are aimed shots from what I can tell, and they can be cheesed this way. Also include static shots and more random shots (well I think some of the aimed shots in your game have random deviations but it's still not enough I think) in your game.