Hey, thanks for playing!
It sounds like you might be the player who is the most experienced with danmaku games so far, based on the success of your challenge run. So, I'll trust your judgement that the hitboxes might be a little too large and I'll have a look at things. At some point I did do some testing to make sure that the hitboxes lined up with the sprites exactly, but it's possible that some newer bullets or some changes may have thrown that off the mark. And even so, it still might feel better if I shave some pixels off of some hitboxes here and there.
Besides the screencap you posted, were there any bullets types in particular you where felt the hitboxes were especially off? Just asking so that I can give those some extra scrutiny.
Yeah, the perspective sometimes making the height of things hard to perceive is something I'm aware of, and there are a few areas I've been meaning to tweak to make a bit more intuitive to understand. Do you recall any spots in particular which confused you?
Noted on the hourglass damage boost. I used to have it during the sort of freeze-frame moment in the Mandrake fight, but cut it because that whole sequence is already verbose and the that information seemed non-essential. I suppose throwing it in the item description would help, but I think not every player will read that. I'll think more about the right place to put that information.
Noted on the frame drops too, I still need to do a big optimization pass.