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I think it's been 2 Demo Days since I played this. It looks like you redesigned the first area to be more linear? I found it much easier to go through. Not that having an open world is a bad thing, but when you've just gotten into the game it is a bit daunting. I had a lot more fun this time.

In the first area, I died a couple of times to the first enemies before I got the famine food (I know I'm bad). That caused me to have extremely low stamina and made the game quite a bit harder. It's not game-breaking, but it does make the game less fun for someone who's just starting out. Also, at some point I got a crash after I tried to equip/change the ammunition of the crossbow. Unfortunately I didn't get the code.

This is a lot funner than last time I played it. Did you add music? It's still extremely buggy, though. I had the following issues: the game doesn't reset properly when  you press the "restart" button. The fish enemies in the first stage stay at the bottom of the screen if you don't kill them. There's a thorn-bush enemy in the third stage that is placed very badly. It essentially just shows up out of nowhere and you'll inevitably get damaged if you don't know it's there. I feel like it's supposed to spawn at least a couple dozen pixels lower.

The pause key is set to the ESC key, so if you pause the game it kicks you out of fullscreen (in Firefox. Not a bug but it bothers me). This is just a game design consideration: the length of the side of the witch girl's hit-box seems to be the same or close to the same length as the diameter of the circle representing it, which is not a good idea since circles aren't shaped the same as boxes (I hope this makes sense). In Touhou I think it's 2-3 pixels smaller than the circle. At least one of the boss attacks starts too early, causing the animation that starts the attack to obstruct the action.

I didn't like the farm girl's second pattern (the one with the scarecrows). You're not able to kill the scarecrows so she can simply shoot them in your face. I don't feel it's awfully hard to dodge but it makes hitting the boss a hassle since it limits your movement. The other patterns are fun. I liked the ghost girl's patterns, but the last one seems to spawn bullets on top of you.

Rosemary's homing bullets are very finicky. Some times they'll home in, but sometimes they won't. I can't figure them out.

Overall I found it pretty fun, but please fix the bugs!

Hi. Fullscreen and scaling is very WIP. I actually considered making the game fullscreen by default so I could get people to test it, but I didn't want people to get crashes (like you did). As far as I tested it it didn't have any major problems, but I only tested it on my resolution, so I'll have to look at it again. Thanks for the report. I'm also considering adding a tutorial sort of thing for the next DD so hopefully the game will be easier to get into. Cheers!

Hello. Thanks for playing! I added a jump command (space bar) this version, but I haven't added a tutorial yet, so you might have missed it. You're supposed to dodge that last attack by jumping over the bullets. I think I'll try to improve the game design for the next DD. I spent most of my time this version looking over the art and making the new shot-types. It's nice to see, though, that the game is getting somewhat funner and less frustrating. Sometimes it's hard to put yourself in the player's shoes. Cheers!

Hello. It's true the lack of contrast is a big issue; I'll try to make the bullets stand out more in the future. You have an interesting suggestion there; I did actually redraw the player sprite this version to make it more noticeable, but I didn't consider redesigning it to indicate where the hit-box is. I'll see if I can make it more obvious. Thanks for playing! (lol'd at high IQ. I'm average at best)

I think I see what you're talking about. I tried to add some anti-aliasing to the sprites as well but I couldn't figure it out.

Apparently I can't run most games with my VM (Win7) due to missing libraries (it seems it can run old games like Higurashi but not GameMaker games or my own game), so I used Wine. If I can get the VM set up (I hadn't used one in over a year and just installed it for the hot-fix) I'll see if I can run it on it.

Very fun arcade game with a cute art-style. At first I thought the movement was a bit slippery, but, since it's my first time playing, I quickly got used to it. I noticed while I was playing that you apparently can't pick up a crab if it's standing right next to another stunned crab (or maybe just another crab in general. I tested it for a bit but I couldn't tell). I also don't like that you can't reset a crab's stun by punching the block it's lying on again (especially in the case of the big crabs, since you can't pick them up), but that's more of a question of game design.

Hi. I'm glad it worked! I was honestly not sure at all it would. Cross-compiling is hard. I did consider making the portraits pixel-art as well, but I feel high-resolution pixel art is actually harder to make look good than traditional art. Maybe it's more of a question of making the game's art better in general. I'll try to add a tutorial for the next version; I'm aware the controls aren't very intuitive.

You're right, most people don't play shoot-'em-ups anymore. Alas! I really like them. They have a specific design philosophy to them. Part of why I'm making this is because I wanted to have a more intimate knowledge of how they're made. Anyway, thanks for playing! (I tried to play your game, but it crashed when I pressed the start button. Probably a local issue. I found the descriptions really funny, though.)

This is still very buggy and early in development, but it has the potential to be a very fun game. I like games where you can have pawns fight for you (this kind of reminded me of Dwarf Fortress). I really liked the ancient Roman names and portraits.

I didn't find the font very readable. I think without the scan-lines it would be more readable, but it's still hard to read. Also, please add line-breaks to the info text!

I won't mention the visual bugs since they're very obvious. The worst bug is probably with the fire button. It'll either not fire any character at all or fire the character immediately below the character you actually want to fire (I think. I couldn't tell what was happening), and then the character will be invisible, but still clickable. I think you fixed most of this in the last version, but firing a character still leaves an invisible clickable box. The game stopped working after I died in the caves. I replaced my dead characters but when I embarked into another dungeon it still said my party was wiped out. This game could use an indicator. I didn't know at first you could mouse over the enemies to read their descriptions.

Haha, well, the art was pretty bad last time. The horse didn't even have a mane (it took months for me to notice that). I'm hoping to get better with time. Cheers!

Hello. Thanks for the detailed feedback. I do agree the patterns are very simple, maybe due to the nature of the game (x-axis only and relatively short screen), but also because I'm not at that level of programming yet, so I prioritized gimmicks over intricate patterns. In that sense it's probably more like older shooters than Touhou, though I did take a lot from Touhou. I have trouble designing levels; stage 2 in particular I've barely changed since I first made it, so it's shorter and less well thought than the other levels. Thanks for reminding me to redesign it. Adding health bars to the bosses would be relatively simple; I'll see if I can do it.

I changed the palette of the game since the last version, so it may have messed up the contrast between the bullets and the background, especially in stage 2. I'll revise it; I also hate when I can't see the bullets on screen. Those static circles I have instead of enemies have been the exact same since the first version. I tried to change them this time when I was looking over the art, but I couldn't come up with anything better (I can't draw), so I just left them as they were. Maybe at some point they'll stop being boring circles.

I think I got something similar to your bug a long time ago, when I was making the options screen, but I can't replicate it at the moment, so I'll have to look at it later. (If you do finish the game, please do tell me if you have any more suggestions.) Thanks for playing!

I haven't played the original IWBTG, but I found this game is pretty fun and pretty pretty. I really like challenging games. There's something extremely satisfying about beating them and figuring them out, even though they can be frustrating at times. I got to the green apple wave pattern on Beginner (so about 2:10) and 0:53.816 on Normal (I keep touching the boss) so far. I played a while without recording since the start of the second pattern (the part where the bullets that spell "I Wanna Give Up!" explode) lags quite a lot on my computer (though I later realized it didn't matter whether I was recording or not. I need a new CPU).

I'll be commenting mostly on Normal. The first pattern is very hard to get; I spent a good ten minutes on it; good thing it's the first pattern so you can retry it easily. Once you learn it, though, you can do it very consistently. The second pattern is pretty and also doable once you get into the flow (I think the lagging made it a lot harder than it is). I actually found that timing your first movements to the music kind of helps. Generally the game is very learnable, which is a good thing. The patterns after that I only saw on Beginner. The wave pattern was very overwhelming the first time I saw it; I managed to figure out where to stand  after a few tries, but I died right after that.

At some point I triggered a soft-lock in the game (see the video). I was playing on Beginner difficulty and I cleared the mid-boss; it flew into the air, like it usually does, but the background didn't change and the game did not progress to the next section. That was the only bug I got, though (I played for about one and a half hour).

Hi. I'm very sorry it crashed like that. Did you actually go through the game twice after it crashed? I am also sorry for that. I should probably make a stage select option for any future testers. Anyway, I was able to replicate the issue (it's a memory leak due to the game not resetting the stages properly after you die), so I'm going to work on fixing it now. Sorry for the inconvenience. I'm aware the controls are not very intuitive, so I'll try to make a sort of tutorial stage; that's probably a better way to explain controls than dumping them in the options screen. Art is really the thing I'm worst at, but I try to improve it a bit with every version. Hildegarde does deal more damage, but the main difference is Lombard's shot is slower and worse at hitting moving targets (at least when it comes to the bosses) and the auto-aim can sometimes work against you (I think). Thanks for playing my game!

Hello. Thanks for reminding me to reset the continues after clearing a stage; that's an oversight. You should be able to continue at least once per stage before you get sent back to the start. I'm not even really sure if I'll keep this system; I'm trying decide on what kind of continue system would be the least frustrating without removing the challenge of the game.  There is an option for toggling the player's hit-box, but it's kind of hidden. You have to press T on the keyboard. As to the 2nd boss's attack, I agree it is a bit too difficult. I think the main problem is the rows being random in addition to being too close together, especially if you're at Hildegarde's speed.  I'll change it to be a bit less extreme. Thanks for playing!

I might have fixed it. I got rid of the library error, at least. It still crashes on my VM, but I think that's a local issue since the older versions that I know worked on Windows also crash. I also got rid of the weird command line window it spawned for some reason. Cheers.

Hmm, I don't know why that happens. Apparently, it's an issue with libstdc++-6.dll. I can't replicate it with Wine so I'll see if I can run this on Windows. Thanks for the report.

Glad to see you again this demo day! I see you fixed many of the collision problems the game had last time, good job. I had some problems with the crawl button on the controller (I think you can't press it twice to go back to standing) so I switched to the keyboard. I like how the game mixes 2D and 3D without losing cohesion.

I had a problem with the guard in the school (around 17:10). I went up to him and talked to him. Then, I jumped over the counter to get to the other side; this got me immediately tased and sent back to the menu screen. I hadn't a save so I had to play the tutorial all over again. Then, when I got to the school again, he was standing outside waiting for me. This is probably not the intended behavior. Everything else worked fine until I had the same freeze problem as Federx but with another door (at the end).

This game is very addicting. I probably played it for way longer than I should. I did not realize there were unlockable weapons while I was playing (I thought the upgrades were for WIP stuff) so I'm going to have to play it again (oh, no!). Adding an option to change your weapons in the menu after you die would probably be a good idea. Thanks for submitting, this was really fun. My high score was 597,326 (around 01:32:40),

Very nice demo. The controls feel great and the visuals are nice. The boss is difficult, but beatable once you learn it. I found it just the right difficulty (though I did resort to kiting a bit at the end). I only have one complaint: I found it very easy to accidentally activate the lock-on button by pressing the left and right mouse buttons at the same time, since it's set to the middle mouse button. It also seems I triggered a visual bug at 24:30 in the video.

I'm trying to play this but I keep soft-locking myself. There's some visual bugs. Also, I think the UI looks too harsh. Otherwise I liked the simulation of the orbits. You could definitely build upon this.

Hi. I'm glad to hear that! I'm flattered that you bothered to draw one of my characters. I posted my own fan-art in the thread as thanks. Cheers.

I sucked, then I learned how to dodge and heal and not scythe the barrels and I sucked less. But I still suck. I think I will have to play smarter if I want to get past the first two floors. I like the main mechanic of the game. Switching between the chemickals gives an extra strategic element to the gameplay.

Great visuals and gameplay! I really liked the UI specifically. I can tell a lot of effort was put into this.

I'll assume this is peculiar to the Linux build since Federx also mentioned it but I think the third level is impossible to beat (on Linux). I don't know what the objectives are supposed to be and you cannot kill the enemies unless you break the game (it looks funny, though).

This is a fun and surprisingly realistic tank game, but it still feels kind of "sandboxxy," if that makes any sense. The map is very big and the enemies are very far apart. I think you should be able to know where the enemies are as soon as or, at least, soon after you start the level. Maybe having a mini-map or a radar could help. As to the terrain, there could be more variation. It feels overall very flat. I think having the player type a sequence to repair the tank is a great idea. I also really liked the weak point system.

The movement feels great, but I had some difficulty turning the turret (some of which may be intentional). I think my main difficulty was this: if you're already turning the turret one way, and you flick the mouse the other way, the turret will start going the other way instead of continuing turning the way it was turning before, generating confusion. I'm not sure that makes sense but I hope it does. I used the rail-gun a lot 1. because it's cool, 2. because I'm bad and prefer to snipe the enemies from afar than get in their face. By the way, I feel the markers, one being red and the other being white, don't sufficiently make clear which one is the "turret" and which one is the mouse. But maybe I'm just slow. I used the other weapons in the earlier stages as well, but there was recording error.

It crashed at the end (around 29:00), so you may want to look at it. I played the Linux version.

I finally got a new GPU, so I can actually play this with over 10 FPS. I played the Linux build.

This game was really fun! At first I thought the dithering filter made it hard to see, but I eventually got used to it so it's not that big  of a deal. I think it adds to the atmosphere. By the way, I really liked this game's atmosphere. It is a problem, though, that it makes some dark sections darker than probably intended (I got confused about where I was multiple times during the first few stages because of that, and back-tracked once).  Making the flashlight a bit brighter would probably fix it. My favorite weapon was the nuke. I like that it deals an absurd amount of damage but you can basically insta-kill yourself with it if you're not careful. The nail-gun is kind of weird. I'm not sure what it does. Sometimes it doesn't even seem to deal any damage. The flame-gun, on the other, is weird but in a different way. It's really strong, but it doesn't look like it should go as far as it does. I can be standing ten feet away from an enemy and still deal damage.

The stage with the boosters was really fun. I like Ace Combat and the flying around in a big stage looking for turrets to destroy reminded me of AC2. I found it funny that the enemy mecha AI in the duels starts running away from you if you're beating it up too badly.

As for the bugs/weird behavior: the screen resolution setting doesn't seem to work. I set it to my resolution and restarted the game, but it didn't do anything. In fact, the settings in general are awkward. For example, the mouse sensitivity option doesn't seem to kick in until you've started another stage, which is far from convenient. There was noticeable freeze before I fired some weapons, but that may just be my toaster acting up. This is more of a design choice, but I don't like that the hover stops at a set height. It feels weird. I feel it should either gradually lose velocity, or just be a simple hover, that is, not make you go up at all.

(I graciously accept my "wasted the whole day" award.)

Hello. Thanks for playing! I'm using SDL for this game. I actually think the base is kind of wonky but I can actually see all the terrible code and small weird bugs that don't affect the gameplay enough to be noticed normally (thanks for calling it solid anyway). I've been trying improve the art, especially the background art, for a while, but I'm scared I'll just spend all of my time on that instead of working on the game and then have it be bad anyway. But it used to be ten times worse, however impossible that may sound, so I think I'm making progress. I agree with what you said about the characters. They are very WIP, especially the guy, since until the last version he didn't even shoot. I was actually planning on giving them different bombs, but it's not very high priority compared to the other stuff. Ultimately the idea is for them to complement each other, but I've also considered making them completely different shot types.

Making the difficulties actually isn't that hard. Most of it is just changing a variable or two. I didn't plan on having them initially but I added them because people were dying too much and I want people who aren't good at shmups to be able to finish the game too. Anyway, thanks for all the detailed feedback. Thanks for the shmup recommendation, too; I'll check it out and see if I can take anything from it.

Hi. Stage 2 boss's second attack is probably the most gimmicky one, so it might be hard to get from intuition. But I also think Lombard might be simply too slow to dodge it properly (I haven't done much balancing on that). I'm glad you didn't have any problems with the controls; it's been an uphill battle to get those to work properly. I agree the effects are way too underwhelming. As for fullscreen, I've added an option for it (though with no proper scaling, so everything will look fatter if your screen isn't 4:3). Lombard does not talk because he's a cool guy, and cool guys are silent. Or perhaps I just can't find a way to fit him in the scenario. He'll probably talk one day. Anyway, thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback!

All right, after testing for a few minutes I was finally able to replicate the movement bug. It seems like if you press left and right on the joystick and only on the joystick too fast it'll send you flying one direction. As to the aiming one, I'm not sure I've been able to replicate it fully, but I found that if you press the aim key for too long it'll change your aim as if you had pressed it again. Thanks again for reporting as I'm not sure I would be able to spot this otherwise.

Hello. I think I'll add a "toggle" for showing the hit-box by default since I figure it's not very intuitive if you're not used to it. There actually is a sound effect for taking damage, but I mixed it so low it's barely audible. In fact, this whole game has a problem with sound effects. Anyway, thanks for playing!

Hello. Now that's a new bug with the controller. It really shouldn't be doing anything by itself at all. I'm guessing it doesn't do the same with the keyboard. I'll look over the mapped buttons since I may have messed something up there. I've also had times I took damage without noticing so I'll see if I can give it more of an impact. Thanks for playing and thanks for the report on the buggy buttons.

Hello. Thank for playing, and thanks for describing your experience with the game! Indeed, I've had complaints about the laser since the first version of the game, so I tried to make it more predictable by making it have a slower onset, but you just gave me a good idea with the fading in. And yeah, I should probably make actual graphics for it instead of it just being generic SDL rectangles. Continues weren't high on my priority list so instead of actually "continuing" I just made them restart the stage with a bunch of lives. I'll probably change it by the next version.

I'd never played one of these kinds of card battle games before but it was quite enjoyable. It's relaxing even though you're technically fighting for your life (well, it is solitaire, after all). The only real criticism I have is sometimes the dialogue bubbles will obstruct view of some of the UI (though only for a few seconds), and it doesn't seem like you can click them away.

This is a fun rogue-like and I found the gameplay to have a good balance between risk and reward, but it needs a lot more features. For example, no hotkey to open the inventory right away is somewhat inconvenient for a rogue-like. I thought the same about the lack of diagonal movement and no option to move with the keypad. I feel embarrassed about complaining about this, but I forgot to save twice (actually, I forgot the save feature even existed) and got sent right back to the beginning after dying, so an auto-save feature would be very helpful. While I was playing I found three bugs. One is that if you're moving down or up and press left or right subsequently, the game will override your input, but not if you're moving left or right and press up or down. Not exactly game-breaking but it makes movement inconsistent. Second is that when you sell or buy or something in the shop the confirm message says "the string wasn't found" (yet surprisingly still works). Third one's less a bug and more simply something that bothered me but, in the hotel, you can't go all the way to the edge of the veranda. Also, battle UI should probably go away outside of the dungeons ( especially during the cutscenes).

Well, at least you didn't have any problem with the controls while playing (except for shooting?). I'll try to add some sort of tutorial and make the controls clearer for PS controller users in the way. I'm guessing you tried to use the keyboard at the end while still having the controller plugged in, which made the game ignore your inputs. I'll try to fix that. Thanks for playing!

Hello. Indeed, aiming on the keyboard is kind of awkward. I'll see if I can do something more intuitive with the WASD keys. It switching automatically after the end of the stage is an oversight; the guy didn't do much in the last version so it made sense then. Thanks for taking the trouble to point it out.

Hello. Yes, indeed, I meant the shoulder buttons... I have no idea why I wrote trigger.

>The first time I finished level 1 the game didn't continue to the next stage.

Ah, finally someone got that bug. I thought it was an issue with my hardware. Sometimes you'll have to press two buttons simultaneously in order to go to the next stage. It seems it only happens on the controller. I'll try to fix it once I revise the controller support (it was added just this build so it's very WIP. Same applies to the sword attack). As for advancing the dialogue, you should be able to do it with the A button. If it's not working, then it's another thing I need to fix. Anyway, thank you kindly for the report.

I'm not sure why, my toaster ran this like a PAL game on an NTSC screen. Anyway, it's a good base for a game, but there's still a lot lacking. Particularly I'd like to see more variety in patterns. The first and second bosses don't feel much different from each other (they both have slow dodging patterns and move up and down, except one has a laser and another fires an object at your face). And this game has great art, but I find the background far too noisy for this sort of game; it draws too much attention to itself.

Hello. Thanks for the video. I'll use it as reference for the next version. I was thinking of changing the aim to a press instead of a hold (the current code uses a counter and is pretty much horrible) so I will probably do that. Glad you liked my scribbles!

Very fun and interesting mashup of shmup and platformer. I liked seeing your progress on the thread. Since I didn't find anything wrong with the gameplay or any bugs, I'll make some nitpicks on the art. Now the moment I got the first axe weapon and used it, I thought "wow, that animation looks weird." Worst part is I'm not an artist so I can't say exactly why it looks weird. It might have something to do with mixels or rixels. I understand much of the art is probably not final but I just wanted to get that off my chest. Otherwise it's a good game and I found the difficulty just on point.

This game is a lot like learning to play an instrument... fun, but it confuses my nervous system. I have to say, though, the physics feels kind of weird. Sometimes it seems to launch you at full speed randomly. It feels like some of the physics is not necessarily tied to momentum but simply how hard you move the stick (sorry if I am wrong, that's how it felt). I liked the choice of sound effects. Since you're going to be hearing them a lot, they need to be pleasant. Now playing this game is certainly a great way to train hand coordination. The Linux version got stuck in the first cutscene, so I played the Windows version on Wine.