Demo Feedback Update Live!

After half a year of feedback, I’m happy to announce that a very, very long list of changes and improvements has come to the demo!

Changelog

Improvements

• Added 5th Forlorn difficulty, above Lunatic

• Rebalanced difficulties, almost everything has been modified in some way, but in general you can expect the old Lunatic difficulty to be the new Forlorn and Easy-Lunatic to lower in difficulty, more closely meet standard expectations

• Rebalanced player shots, buffing them greatly and ensuring standardized DPS rates, spells are currently unmodified, but shooting down bosses especially is easier

  • Reimu’s shot type is relatively the same, but her shots are much faster, and all of them can hit bosses at the same time, making it easier to get “Nicely Timed” when defeating bosses.

  • Marisa’s shot type introduces wall-ricocheting lasers; when they ricochet, they will naturally aim towards enemies but deal less damage than if you aim them manually. She can also now reset her aim by briefly letting go of the Shoot button.

  • Ichirin’s shot type has generally much more reliable punches, a more forgiving damage fall-off distance, and she can now punch in a circular area around her to get enemies behind her, though Unzan’s fists will prioritize enemies closest to her and in front of her.

  • In-depth damage calculations are as follows (at 60fps):

    • Reimu

      • Unfocused: main { 2 * 0.25 } + homing { 4 * 1.40625 * 8 / 30 } = 2 = 120dps

      • Focused: main { 2 * 0.25 } + needle { 4 * 0.5 } = 2.5 = 150dps

    • Marisa

      • Direct: main { 2 * 0.25 } + laser { 4 * 0.5625 } = 2.75 = 165dps

      • Ricochet: main { 2 * 0.25 } + laser { 4 * 0.4375 } = 2.25 = 135dps

    • Ichirin

      • Close (dist <= 300): main { 2 * 5 * 0.75 / 5 } + fist { 15 / 10 } = 3 = 180dps

      • Far (barely in fist range dist = 500): main { 2 * 5 * 0.75 / 5 } + fist { 2 * 15 / 120 } = 1.75 = 105dps

      • Farthest (out of fist range dist > 500): main { 2 * 5 * 0.75 / 5 } = 1.5 = 90dps

  • In-depth ability modifications are as follows:

    • Reimu

      • Small hitbox (unchanged)

      • Homing shot that prioritizes familiars (unchanged text, but better homing)

      • Full Spirit Combos grant longer invincibility, 3 seconds instead of 2 (changed from clearing familiars on screen)

    • Marisa

      • High power lasers that lean into movement (unchanged text, but better leaning)

      • Lesser homing lasers when reflected off walls (changed from just mentioning fast movement)

      • Full Spirit Combo flashes damage enemies (changed from large Spirit Coin clear area of effect)

    • Ichirin

      • Extremely powerful melee range punches (unchanged text, but better punching)

      • Charges when not punching (faster focused) (unchanged text, but faster charging, 2 seconds to full charge when focused, down from 5)

      • Full Spirit Combos boost movement speed (changed from dealing 10x more damage inside enemy auras instead of 3x, found that in practice this was negligible)

• Increased bomb invincibility duration

• Increased death invincibility duration

• Removed all enemy hitboxes, so no more ricocheting off bosses unexpectedly, however bosses will now shoot a bit of dissuasive kunai if you get too close while they are normally attacking (this is to prevent standing safely on top of where bullets are spawning, if no bullets are spawning, they will not shoot the “too-close-kunai”)

• Spirit Chamber Full Spirit Combo counter now only counts up instead of down then up, and 2 new supplementary numbers underneath indicate the Last Spell unlock requirement and a Secret unlock requirement (does nothing now, but good practice for when it matters in the full game!!)

• Stage enemy colors are now much more consistent for routing, now the only possible randomness is vertical mirroring and not color order

• Boss patterns should now be shorter on average

• Increased boss hitbox size

• Item movement is now much faster and the collection window starts much sooner, making collecting Spirit Coins a better experience

• Increased “Nicely Timed” window of opportunity from 1.25 seconds to 1.5 seconds

• Boss indicators now no longer expand to indicate damage dealt, but instead expand in addition to the existing color change to indicate “Nicely Timed” window

• Important toasts (“Nicely Timed”, “Bonus Failed”, and spell bonus numbers) are now always visible even when toasts are turned off in the Settings

• Improved font selection for toasts and other various UI elements

• Stage Report graphs now also show during replays

• Dampened bright and flashing background scenarios to improve accessibility

• Only the smallest player-overlapped aura in Yin-Yang Orbs with multiple auras will flash if flashing is enabled, to improve accessibility

• Greatly reduced overdraw in main menu

• Greatly reduced overdraw in Stage 2 background

• Nearly doubled rendering performance of toasts

• Somewhat improved rendering performance of dialogue text

• Restructured Settings and added many more accessibility features, the full Settings list is now as follows (new underlined):

  • Master Volume (0-100)

  • BGM Volume (0-100)

  • SFX Volume (0-100)

  • Panning Intensity (0-100)

  • Dynamic Practice Music (On/Off)

  • Key Input Display (On/Off)

  • Sidebar Portraits (On/Off)

  • Animated Logo (On/Off)

  • PBR Lighting (On/Off)

  • Dialogue Text Wiggle (On/Off)

  • Screen Shake (On/Off)

  • Screen Engrave (On/Off)

  • Proximity Flashing (On/Off)

  • Enemy Shot Animation (On/Off)

  • Player Shot Opacity (0-100)

  • Item Opacity (0-100)

  • Player Ring Opacity (0-100)

  • Background Level of Detail (0-3)

  • Background Parallax (On/Off)

  • Toasts (0-100)

  • Gradient Rings (0-100)

  • Gradient Foliage (0-100)

  • Spirit Aura Circles (0-100)

  • Spirit Aura Lines (0-100)

  • Spirit Coin Tokens (0-100)

  • Spirit Coin Sparkles (0-100)

  • Spirit Combo Kanji (0-100)

  • Boss Flames (0-100)

  • Boss Circles (0-100)

  • Exposure (0-100)

  • Contrast (0-100)

  • Saturation (0-100)

  • Gamma (0-100)

New Features

• Added Steam Cloud integration

• Added a visual ring around the player to indicate the following:

  • Contents of the Spirit Chamber (the 5 notches on the small ring will indicate the colors)

  • Graze radius (small ring)

  • Item suction radius (large ring), this includes Spirit Coins that match the color of the Spirit Chamber, and Rainbow Spirit Coins

  • Ambiguous Spirit Coin suction radius (small ring), this includes non-Rainbow Spirit Coins when the Spirit Chamber is empty or only contains Rainbow Spirit Coins

  • Bullet clear radius (large ring), bullet clear occurs whenever you collect a Spirit Coin, and for a short duration after a Full Spirit Combo

  • For Ichirin, she will also have a third massive ring, indicating the maximum distance she can punch, while the typical large ring indicates the minimum distance you must be to deal maximum punch damage

• Shots can now be re-grazed up to 5 times a second

• Enabled grazing while invincible

• Updated various portraits

• Added PBR (physically based rendering) lighting to portraits and the stage frame

• Added ability to customize starting resources for all non-Campaign runs

• Added ability to toggle whether to practice some stage or boss section in isolation or additionally the entire rest of the stage following that section

• Added ability to toggle fast reset in practice, turning it off affords the opportunity to save failure replays by selecting Return to Title

• Added automatically saving replays mid stage caused by selecting Return to Title

• Added replay renaming for Starred replays

• Added displays for score, misses, and bombs in replay info

• Miss and Bomb counters now start gold and turn red when losing a life or using a spell, in addition to turning gray if a stage during a Campaign run was restarted via “Rewind Stage” at any point after Stage 1, this can be used as an indication of a “spliced 1cc” run instead of a “consecutive 1cc”

• Added pitch variation to most frequent sfx

• Added a master volume slider

• Added alpha sliders for all graphical effects instead of ON/OFF for much more discrete visual control accessibility

• Bosses drop what they’re holding when they explode (cosmetic only), and they now only explode once per battle instead of twice if their Last Spell is unlocked

• The game will now pause if window focus is lost in the middle of a stage

Bug Fixes

• Fixed Spirit Coins spawning off-screen to the left/right or spawning too low to be collected in time

• Fixed game freezing at inopportune times when loading bosses causing possible unexpected death and music desync, now instead of loading a boss right as you’re about to encounter them, they are loaded either at the start of the stage, or right after a midboss, both are before the moment the music starts or resyncs

• Fixed some sounds cutting themselves off

• Fixed rewinding during Campaign not saving a replay of any unsaved previous stages

• Fixed score not accumulating when toasts are disabled

• Fixed high score not showing correctly during the first watch of a replay

• Fixed glitchy transition after Mamizou’s practice boss in the tutorial

• Fixed interaction between Ichirin’s fists and enemy auras she’s inside

• Fixed errant enemy damage sounds

• Fixed misleading prompt asking to resize the window when launching the game

• Fixed enemy damage rate calculation not updating when an enemy exits invincibility while the player is inside their aura

• Fixed poor alpha layering interaction between portrait body and face when transitioning between visible and invisible

• Fixed grayscale bullets turning into red flakes

• Fixed restarting stage replays breaking music occasionally

• Fixed music starting at incorrect point occasionally

• Fixed BGM not resuming if you pause at stage start occasionally

• Fixed Steam not installing DirectX9 and Visual C++ dependencies with game installation

• Removed non-functional settings and defaults in config that caused rendering or launching errors on various hardware

I hope these changes will make the game much more fun and make the easier difficulties more accessible.

Note: If you encounter any issues with this update, please first try uninstalling and reinstalling. It's possible that Steam Cloud integration will not yet sync properly with your local /data and /replay files. If issues persist, please reach out!

Soup’s on!!!