What if shattered shot was changed in the way that amount of shots that are spawned on hit are tied to how many times the player picks the item up in that run?
If i pick the item up only once, every shot that hits a hedge or enemy would spawn one additional shot, if i pick up the shattered shot a second time, on hit two additional shots would be spawned and so on.
The problem with shattered shot is, that shots will not only destroy hedges but also multiply them self, causing a chain reaction that can wreck easily dozens of hedges AND kill all the enemies that were revealed by the destruction of said hedges. It looks like its slef multiplying sometimes, i might be wrong.
In the first loop that is not a problem yet, except in the wetlands level with that red snail that spawns worms on death, the snail gets spawned in and dies so fast, spawning much more worms than normal, which all instantly die.
Combined with the chain reaction like destruction of way too many hedges way too fast and the death of anything that hid inside them, the game starts lagging and the game forgets to delete enemies once they die.
Past the first loop when more enemies hide in the hedges, it gets worse, to the point that the game freezes and sometimes crashes.