From the little bit I played, this game looks pretty solid so far. The game looks pretty good, and the music is very cool (you made it yourself, right?). I'm not really that much of a shmup person, and sometimes I can get overwhelmed by bullet hells, so I'm not gonna rate this.

Ahaha, thank you so much.
Yes, I made all of the music.
And yes, the game seems to overwhelm a lot of its players.

Oh well ^^
Whenever it's done, then that's what the tutorial stage is for :)

but we were interrupted before finishing the zero stage

"WHENEVER IT'S DONE."

Okay :P

I've compiled some sentiments about the game.
I'm hoping that these'll entice people to play rather than scare them off :V

MoTK's Trickysticks "Hard, but fun!"
Christian C. "Fuck. I just died to the first boss fourth form. (Uh? Oh yeah, it'll get you. How is it? Fun?) It's a game. It's just really hard."
Rebecca G. "WHAT IS THIS!? I hate you! How do you expect me to dodge this?"

Um, okay. Never mind.

About every single comment I've received has said that it's really hard.

Well, at least you know what to expect!

Wow. Even at the easiest setting, I still lose in a couple of minutes. I don't think I'm cut out for these types of games. haha.

Games that spite you and are challenging to everybody?
Most aren't :V

I'm also wondering when people will complain about what I call "normal" difficulty :P

Unfortunately. :(
That's why I haven't beaten Magicka yet. I'm like on the second chapter...

This is a really good game, but it has a few tiny flaws that can kind of slightly ruin the experience for newcomers.

Firstly, I'll start off with the only two real flaws of the game.

First, I must say, the difficulty on Calm is still pretty difficult. I know it's a bullet hell and it's supposed to be hard, but I thought that even the easiest difficulty, "Calm" was hard as shit to beat sometimes. Some of the bullet patterns were pretty difficult to avoid. Now I'm not saying change the patterns to make them easier, I'm saying the player should have more lives than just 3 on the easiest difficulty, I think it should be 5, that seems like the perfect amount. Well, to me at least. Since I couldn't beat the second level, I just decided to play on practice mode instead because you get like 10 lives.

Second, is that some of the game's menues were confusing, the only confusing part about it was where you are choosing your ship, I had no clue what some of the text meant at first. Most new players wouldn't know what a "Solar Hydra" or a "Gear Axis" is. There's a simple solution for this as well.
Just put Ship Name: "Ship Name Here" instead of just the ship's name.

Also, under where it says the name of the bomb, please make it say "Description:" or something so it can become more clear that the words below the word "Bomb" are actually the bomb's description. The reason I believe this is a flaw is because, this could lead player's into choosing something they might not want or like, and they might not understand what they are shooting out of their ship and what it does.

The gameplay itself is pretty addicting and fun, there's plenty of replayability, especially for bullet hell fans, though it can be frustrating due to the lack of checkpoints, but the game itself is supposed to be difficult and kind of old school, so that is easily forgivable.

I do appreciate the fact that you do try to make it accessible to more casual players by adding practice modes and changing the bullet patterns to make them easier for new players.

Also, on your old blog, I was being a little harsh on your sound effects, they pulled off the job quite well, and fit with the game. Well done.

but, there's obviously the graphics thing, but this game doesn't need better graphics really. It would make the game look nicer, but isn't really necessary.

The color palette is pretty great, that's usually what turns me off about bullet hells, usually too many particle effects and bright colors that rape my eyes, and I hate that. I do wish this game had slightly more pretty particles, but that's just an extremely minor gripe.

Other than that, an excellent amount of replayability, addictiveness and fun. It got my heart beating on some of the boss fights, it's very addicting and hectic.

Even people who aren't fans of bullet hells could enjoy this game, and the learning curve is pretty smooth. Probably the one and only bullet hell game that I'll ever actually enjoy.

Overall,
Excellent game, that almost anyone should be able to enjoy,

8.9/10 (9/10)

Wow, thanks for the review, JID!

All of these changes can readily be done. There'll also be little animations to the side of the ship choosing window, just to sweeten the ship choosing gripe :V

The particles were made back in the very beginning of development. I don't think they'd mind a little lift.

And, well, I did remove some lives from the game. Between the starting four, the ones dropped from midbosses, and the ones attained by point item extends, there were a total of 17 lives in the main game D:
(For reference, the most generous Touhou game gave 13, and the least gave 9.)
Assuming you death-bombed every time, you were able to be hit 90 times.
Then I took out two extends, created penalties for death (Charge loss. If you are not a scorerunner, no effect to you.), and reduced bombs per life from five to three. Because five bombs are still dropped from bosses, you get 50 hits maximum.

(You did know death-bombing existed? Whoops. It'll be in the Zero Stage.)

I should give out extra bombs in Practice, too. Just in case the 11 lives weren't insurance enough.

Just to be curious:
How often did you end up bombing away boss attacks? Stage portions?
What shottype did you use?
Any attacks stand out, difficulty-wise?
Did you spend little, or lots of time in focus mode? (Holding Shift to go slower, see your hit-box)
Your thoughts on the music? (Visit the music room for it!)
And finally, while in Practice, did you check out the later stages?

I had no idea about the focus mode thing, I'll try it out.

Also, to answer some of your questions, I used my bombs wisely, I only used them when I needed them most. Only when the bosses tried to use tougher attacks than usual, I'd use them.

I'm not exatly sure what you meant by shot type, but I'm assuming you mean the bombs that I can choose in the main menues? :p If so, I used the first one on the lists, never switched to the second one yet. I have however used both ship types.

I think with the boss on the second level, I was kind of confused when he started doing the spinning/teleporting shit and started spewing bullets everywhere lol.

I thought the music fit the game, now that I listened to it.

In Practice I only went up to stage two, then I wrote this review, I'm still gonna play some more and give you feedback where I feel is needed.

Pretty awesome. I'll never make it past the first boss, even on "Calm" difficulty, because I suck at shmups.

Cool music too, by the way.

8/10

Thanks. Lots of the documentation is regrettably missing, to note.
I believe people will find it easier once they get handles on such mechanics as death-bombing.
(Hammer the bomb button as you get hit- save your life and wipe the screen.)

Oh, and focus.
It's almost as if people actively disbelieve in it because everyone IRL I've let play it are adamant that it's easier to go without it :[

3rd wave of the boss is bullets everywhere. how is that calm? :/

music was meh, menu was ok. dont make x go to the exit button <_< graphics were ok. sometimes the bullets seemed to blend in, which was slightly irritating.

but yeah, the third wave is rediculous on calm. i was like, how is this calm when you cant go anywhere but into a bullet lol?

Dude, that's an awesome game. I suck at shmups but you know what? I would totally learn NOT to suck, just for this game. Also, the music rocks. I'm going to find a way to put it on my lame ass dinosaur mp3. :)

AND CALM MODE WAS NOT CALM, BY ANY MEANS. Just sayin'. :P

There's a trick to almost everything in the game, it does require a little practice.

Also bombs are fun and good for you.

lol i forgot how hard lunacy star was
I don't think I ever got past the second stage when I played the older version, and even now it's still hard - the bullets are so fast D:
although I did just play it on normal and got up to the stage 3 boss through excessive bombing (holy carp stage 3 boss is an actual person what)
(like seriously the first two bosses were abstract-box-entities)
(revolutionary right there)

Yeah I don't know if I've ever mentioned it but I think this and a couple of Kilin's games are what got me into Touhou recently. Or at least prepped me mentally for dealing with screenfulls of bullets.
Not strictly related, but I figure I should say thanks I guess? cause damn there is a world of music there i am glad to know about now

I still can't beat it on hard. But I've come close :I
Jaimers from the Touhou forum beat my score on his first try though, at 640 million, which saddens me.

As for the music. LS1 music isnt a thing we talk about. Congrats on discovering Touhou, tell me if you beat my 990m PCB Normal score :D

I couldn't even beat stage 1 on I-suck-at-games mode.

lol I haven't even beaten EoSD yet ;_;
(though i did get to stage 6 a couple times)

and yeah i feel like "calm" mode on LS is like "normal" mode on EoSD lol