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The controls always being listed with both keyboard and gamepad controls was mildly confusing. Like, I'd always have to put effort into ignoring the keyboard part to just focus on the gamepad part. When I was being given tutorial prompts fairly often, it's a little disorienting. Also, the attack bindings on gamepad seem to be broken; when I played, just using the mini-hakkero and throwing a potion were bound to the same button, which meant I was throwing potions willy-nilly without meaning to, which made combat a nightmare (since I kept wasting my potions AND my attempts to just use the mini-hakkero kept getting blocked by potions AND I wasn't sure if the fire would hurt me so I kept manuevering around it). I just assumed that was how the game was, but then I read the controls and realized that they're supposed to be bound separately.

Besides that (and the obvious and deeply understandable problems caused by this game being extremely unfinished), it was a fun little time. The Cirno/Wriggle relationship drama was cute, and Wriggle's "favorite show" got a genuine laugh out of me and my friend I played this with. The mere concept of this game being a Castlevania 64 clone was also pretty nifty.

Played this with a friend. He got jumpscared by the intro cinematic and didn't get a good look at it. The intro cinematic never played for him again. I only realized it *was* an intro cinematic when I downloaded the game myself to investigate. As a consequence, we kinda just completely missed *half* of the game's story without realizing it, because the story takes a complete backseat during the hiragana lessons. It'd be better for the intro sequence to just be a part of the lesson structure like how the ending cutscene is, so you just experience it normally and can replay it.

I was also honestly expecting the basketball framing device to work a bit differently- I was imagining more "Move the basketball around the screen to demonstrate stroke orders"- like the basketball is a cursor. I will admit, though, I think the actual gameplay is a fairly effective drilling method. Make a high score mode and expand it to all of the characters and I think it'd do wonders for getting people to memorize hiragana. I'm also not sure I would have personally explained Tome, Hane, and Harai right at the start- in my high school Japanese class, we started covering that towards the *end* of the intro to calligraphy unit. Like, a few days into the part about learning how to write hiragana. And honestly, that placement makes more sense to me. Getting into Tome, Hane, and Harai immediately just feels kinda overwhelming. Then again, if you wait, you risk the student developing bad calligraphy habits... but I think those sorts of bad handwriting habits are pretty easy to overcome if you just drill yourself a bit, regardless of the language. And my friend certainly seemed *distracted* by the Tome, Hane, and Harai stuff.

Aside from these minor-but-fairly-specific issues, this game was a blast. I was mildly afraid going into it that the joke might get laid on a little thick- that the game's sense of humor would rely entirely on stale basketball memes, or just try way too hard to be funny to the point of being annoying- but thankfully, my fears weren't met. The game honestly spends most of its run taking the subject matter seriously, which makes it funnier when it does bust out a joke; and rather than stale basketball memes, the humor of the main story really relied more on the comedic premise of "Imagine if REIMU HAKUREI was an ecoterrorist fighting fascism" and how humorously jarring the contrast of that is. The flip-flopping vulgarity was also really funny to us- how one second it'd go "What the hecking heck" as if it's trying as hard as possible to be sanitized and clean, only to immediately follow it up with "What the actual fuck".

thank you.... wonderful to know the truth

is "reimoo" perhaps have any non-specified relatives?

The writing is phenomenal. The philosophical discussions and snappy back-and-forths feel like they came right out of a chapter of Curiosities of Lotus Asia. The music caught me off-guard at first, but I eventually wrapped my head around what it was trying to do and it won me over. The visuals are a bit of a weakness- my biggest complaint is that Rinnosuke is way too small, he looks like he'd only come up to Marisa's waist. All in all, solid little game that fills a very unpopulated niche.

The one complaint I really have is that, in the overworld, it's not always clear which places are walkable terrain and which aren't. There are a lot of areas that ARE walkable in battle but NOT in the overworld, which is probably the most confusing part. A map button would also be a phenomenal addition- the minimap is often too zoomed-in to be of much use. Otherwise, this game is absolutely fantastic. Even Shanghai's unfinished animations are impressive- they speak to how really ambitious and fleshed-out this game's combat is.

Shockingly complete for a game made in just 72 hours. Don't get me wrong, I can see where the corners were cut, but it really just amounts to "There's only three girls and there's a couple unpolished bits here and there (most notably, the sprites don't really animate)"- otherwise, this could totally pass for a game made under a more realistic deadline.

Also, I just really enjoy the bullet hell-y spin on the Helltaker gameplay style. And I find it really refreshing how the girls featured aren't the typical Marisa harem.

Shockingly sweet, honestly really funny, and just addicting gameplay.

Played this with a friend. Probably the biggest standout moment was when Exploration Layer 3 started playing- the art style evolution was unbelievably genius and compelling the whole time, but that was the absolute peak moment of it. Just a few more background instrumentals made the music feel so much more alive and interesting, and in turn made Ruukoto feel so much more alive.