Bullet hell incarnation of Vib-Ribbon, eh?
Played it with this song: https://youtu.be/VOXX13b92yA
Result:
Hits: 185
Games lost: 19
Times dashed: 239
Rank: F
Satisfaction: 100%
This was true bullet hell, and I loved every minute of it. Only one issue and a couple nitpicks:
- On more intense songs, the circle AoE attack can just hit the player with no chance to dodge. It also deals very high damage and can be devastating and heartbreaking when you're trying to wing it to the checkpoint on 1-2 hp. Maybe if the attack marker appeared slightly earlier on high BPM songs, e.g. if there were 2 stages to marker's animation before it deals a damaging attack, then it'd be fairer to dodge?
- The game responded really well to the music and really kept the action and bullets coming - though I wonder if some configurable options for the gameplay and visuals would work well? Like being able to increase/decrease camera shake, visual flashes, bullet density modifiers and attack types that can spawn...
- When reaching checkpoints, healing the player might be a good idea. Most of the time I reached the
checkpoints with only a few hp left, and just kamikaze'd to full health, since you're really at the mercy of the circle AoE RNG when your hp is low.
- How am I supposed to rate the game for audio???? Do I put 1 star because audio is non-existent, or 5 stars because it can literally be anything you want..?
Overall - A technological marvel for sure, not much else to say! While it doesn't fit the theme so well imo (health and screen boundaries are a videogame staple to be honest), it really doesn't matter. Perhaps with some more features and ways to customize the gameplay it would reach exceptional quality - you've already got a solid mechanical foundation, and it's already a ton of fun to play ^^ Congrats!