Wow, this is some really detailed feedback! Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed the game and took the time to write all this out. Your opinions are definitely valid, so I'll go through them one-by-one, from the top:
- I didn't realise the "game over" screen worked that way, sounds like a bug I need to fix. Thanks for letting me know.
- "Core-bombing" is something I threw in for the hell of it, thinking maybe an advanced player could get the hang of it (I too struggle to pull it off except by accident). For the sequel, I need to either refine it as a mechanic or just scrap it.
- Making the cores a different colour is something I hadn't thought of, but could be a good solution. I'll give it a try and see how it feels.
- Prism Mode is similar to Core-bombing; it's a debug feature that I threw in for accessibility purposes. You're not the first to point out that it's too easy, and it's definitely something I need to think about for the sequel.
- Life Bursts are an actual mechanic, but the window to use them is extremely small; you have to more or less anticipate getting hit and use the Burst right as the bullet lands. I agree that there's not enough feedback to tell you if you've executed one, and I'm already fixing that in the sequel. Any mention of "death bursts" is a typo that should say "Life Bursts", and something I need to fix.
- Violet's second attack has been a PITA to get right. I think I need to add some sort of hardcoded rule that guarantees there'll be a safe spot somewhere near the middle.
- In theory, any bullet that's out-of-bounds should be erased automatically. My guess wrt. Saffron's first pattern is that the bullets aren't quite going far enough out-of-bounds to trigger that, but I don't know what's happening with the ghosts in Scarlet's stage so I'll look into that.
- I'll have a look at the Burst, I know it was a bit finicky at times during development. Lua doesn't like it when you remove items from an array while iterating over it.
- I hadn't considered naming the DX-exclusive game modes, but you're absolutely right: naming and describing will probably work much better as an incentive. It probably doesn't help that even in DX, they're still locked until you get the good and bad endings. I think I'll adjust that in the next update, and edit the description with some more info.
- The Compendium completion achievement unlocking early is for backwards compatibility with older versions of the game, where there were two Compendium entries that couldn't be unlocked due to a glitch. I wanted anyone who'd encountered that glitch to be able to unlock the achievement. The glitch was fixed long ago so if it's causing confusion, I can up the requirement again.
- I'll fix Prism Indigo's Compendium entry, thanks for pointing that out.
That's a lot for me to look at, but again, thanks for such detailed, constructive feedback! I'm glad you're looking forward to the sequel and I hope I won't let you down. (BTW, not sure if you're aware but there's a one-level demo of it out already ;) )