Damn, that title screen - Whee.
Also miku, ha

Save select starts on Hard if save is empty, start it on medium - Not anymore though, since hard is dead for the foreseeable future.
Starts on load game if save isn’t empty which is good

Oh you play as the miku, interesting.
+ changes your sprite one way, maybe make a button to change it the other direction too. (- is the obvious one) - Still decided to leave this out. The only reason here is that (especially with discussions with sunbla) I have decided to put more thought into those weird controller players. For a standard xbox controller (which is probably the most common? I don't actually know that) there isn't a good available button.
Double tap esc to exit, nice
Maybe a note sprite for the vocaloids shooting? (smaller version of the save) - I think I mentioned this - I had this in the original version but it felt like it needed custom sounds and it started looking a bit weird and getting a bit annoying so i rolled it back to standard shooting.
Possibly let song continue while paused. - This has an option nowadays, I personally like it pausing (since I'm usually pausing to take a phone call or whatever) but its definitely understandable to not (especially from a streamer perspective, if they have to step away leaving it in sudden silence is awkward).
Hahaha, very nice death animation/game over screen
Oh, and you DID change it per character, I’m impressed
When you say you can change things on the options screen, maybe note that it is reached via the title screen, not just by pausing (or move it to ingame) - As you may have noticed, the options are available via the pause menu added at some point after this comment.

Flooded Steppes
Screen 1
Signposts weren’t described in the tutorial, also the white text is hard to read. - I think by now all these signs should be good. Boy I sure hope so.
Thought the top left of the screen was a secret, tiling is probably fine? But making a note of it - I think I changed this since then?

Screen 2
Save 2
(Ignore, tester is blind) Secrets count as collected even if you don’t hit save? Probably make a note of that in tutorial. - It is now.
Maybe remove ceiling minispikes? Not sure how hard later secrets are yet - This has been relocated. Its not that I hate the jump but for the first secret in the game to be bland needle stuff is meh (a TAS landing too, come on past self!) Its now something gimmick related that's just weird.
Possibly to ignore second block of regular route, seems fine, not easy, but noted - you don't ignore this block. You don't need it for the intended path but if you're going to big ball it, you can push it right and set up for a pretty precise skip jump to avoid the water entirely.
Screen 3
Save 1
First block struggles to get through second hole (with the spike), gotta tap to get it through, holding a side seems to make it pass over, maybe increase hole by 3px or so. (Actually shrinking the box horizontally a little would make more sense.) - This should be cleaner now.
Save 2
Nice touch having the water slightly above the waterfall so you don’t have to keep jumping up from the water below

Screen 4
Save 1
Second block doesn’t fall down gap, possibly intentional - Should work better now.
Save 2
I know you want to make the secrets hard, but damn…I’ll test them properly later I guess when I have a better idea about the rest of them - This ones a little tough, but its been nerfed slightly.

Screen 5
Same block issue as screen 4 save 1 - Should work better now.
Quite a long save, especially with the backtracking, not sure if this should be eased up a little as deaths will cause more frustration than normal - A couple of the tougher jumps have been nerfed on this since then.

Screen 6
Save 1
Bottom jump can be done with/without water.
Trying to reach the water at the bottom however, is quite difficult for the level currently at, I’m not sure if the block is supposed to be required, but it isn’t. Maybe lower the minispikes a bit. - The water should make it easier, and its nerfed slightly now but I like it the way it is where the player can think about it
Save 2
At this point I’m thinking maybe let the player move the blocks a bit faster. While I understand why they move slow, with how much you do it, especially with repeated saves, it feels like a drag to have to place/re-place them because it takes so long. - They should be twice as fast as when you last did this.
I also feel you should ask Sunbla to help with difficulty testing, as I don’t feel properly capable of that for easier stuff.
On the way up to the second block, maybe remove one ceiling minispike? A little awkward to get back.
I don’t know how possible it is to link all the screens together to let the player go back. Kinda sucks to miss a secret then not being able to go back for it because the screen suddenly walls off.
Secret was surprisingly hard for me, but it’s fine.

Screen 7
I really don’t think this is 40 difficulty, but again, I’d recommend talking to Sunbla for confirmation on that. - I think most of this is marginally easier since then, but its been a while.

Screen 8
Save 1
Ceiling diamond jump for the secret. No. - As we discussed, this wasn't required and now its been changed to be more apparent what needs to be done, huzzah.
Last jump of that isn’t easy either, but maybe ok?
Pushing a block right on a ledge, but still not landing on the ledge is a little annoying. Maybe the speed idea fixes this too. - Should be better now.
Last jump might be a little annoying after all the rest you have to do for the save? Probably ok.

Screen 9
Save 1
Bottom left jump may be a little difficult to time the double jump, but really it’s just a visual thing. Normally I’d say this is fine, but it isn’t too short a save, like the rest of this stage. - I do believe this has been nerfed slightly.
Save 2
I like how the waterfall blocks you double jumping into the spike at the bottom, that’s nice.

Boss
Ice is cool (pun unintended)
Bio is good
Fire 2 is probably ok, although you won’t survive seeing it first time
Vanish…I’m not sure about this, kind of annoying to figure out, especially compared to ice/bio
Graviga/flare is also cool
Yeah only having issue with vanish, seems significantly harder than the others to me. - This was changed to give more space to work with but it still takes a little bit of learning.
Maybe make the attacks end/disappear when the boss dies. - This was done.
Also Fire 2 made me realise it can be a little hard to tell when you’ve landed if you’re on the edge (because the block sprite doesn’t quite go to the edge of it, which is fine itself), so maybe make a poof or something so you can tell when you’ve landed? Not sure how high priority this should be. - Block tiles on this were changed to be flatter ones to mitigate this.


The Craggy Ascent
Screen 1
Can be a bit hard to see the spikes on the background with the brown on brown parts. - As you noted later, added a mist effect in a depth level between foreground and background to better differentiate this.
Save 2
Can save from the right side - definitely needs a blocker here
Save 3
Jumping over the diamond is a little difficult, let alone getting the refresher too - this jump is nerfed a bit, I like it but its a lot of heavy full jump near the start of a save.

Screen 2
So far through this stage, due to the saves being quite a bit shorter, they feel easier - I think we discussed this in that I was shooting to mix up between stages for more thinking stages and more straightforward ones so the early parts of this stage you just roll through. Hopefully does still feel that way.
Save 2
Not sure why there are two refreshers (or even one really) for the second jump. - These were removed since they were left for hard mode just for the heck of it and that's gone too.
Save 3
Not sure about the start of the last jump. Just reaching the refresher can be a bit of a pain, especially because you have to grab it from high up to reach the next two. - this save has been nerfed through adjusted JRs.

Scrolled through to see how much there was, couldn’t page down from the vocaloid rush :(.
(1hr20mins, ~300 deaths up to this point)

Everything before this point was done on the version before Sunbla got a hold of it.

Song has some clicking sounds going on? Not sure if it’s just the song or something is a little broke.

Screen 3
Save 3
Not entirely sure about the diamond at the end, but can’t think of a good replacement.

Screen 4
The jump refreshers change colour with your character, nice. - The kid gets boring jump refreshers to motivate people to use other characters.
Save 2
Had some real trouble with the turn around on the landing after the last jump refresher, not sure if it’s a problem, may just be me.
Rest of the save felt comparably easy though.

Screen 5
Cool gimmick

Screen 6
Save 2
Not entirely sure why one of the bottom left jump refreshers are there, as it definitely isn’t needed. - Was just to make the drop easier but this was changed to be easier in a different way.

Screen 8
Save 1
No save blocker, intentional? Probably fine - It'd take a serious choke for this to matter. Boy what a choke that would be.
Save 2
No save blocker on left side of gate
Oh, purple blocks get destroyed when you reset here, nice. - Yeah, this used to be one screen to clear and build the ladder but it was way too long so its triggered to split the room.

Screen 9
Save 2
Not sure about how close the 2nd jump refresher is to the spike. - Yeah this is a little fickle to get through but there's a couple approaches.
Also the wooden block isn’t needed. - Nope, but for beginner players my feedback they found that a good alternative.
(I realise at this point that maybe some “unnecessary” parts may be required on the other mode.)

Screen 10
Save 2
Cool save, was wondering what the point in being able to come back up was for a bit. - In theory its for doing it properly too, but balancing what some people can spam to what other people can do normally makes it unrealistic to get it in a way that can't be one cycled without making it too difficult for a newer player.

Boss
Maybe start attacks a little slower when you skip, as the red flash is still there. Maybe just better to remove the red flash entirely if you skip.
Also can’t hit the skip button immediately after saving, I guess because boss hasn’t spawned in yet? - Yeah there's a tiny pause since you can use skip to save.
Fire beam attack, on part two, give the player more time to get to the right before the lava on the ground appears. I understand it moves that fast to let the player get over quicker, but you can’t really react to it when you first see it. Even the second wave of lava may appear a bit too fast as well, but maybe that’s ok as you’re already on the right. - This attack was lightly nerfed, though for people who opt to the far side will still be screwed the first time around.
Other attacks seem good.
I was a little worried about how long it takes to kill too, but I think it’s fine. - The cycles on this boss and the downtime where its kind of just silent were removed by adjusting the boss movement, so it should feel a bit faster with a less standing around.

No more stage names or title cards? Can’t see it in the options now - Yeah, as you saw this was retired for a much cooler stage information solution.
Stage 3
Screen 2
Maybe have it so you don’t spawn bombs when on top of a save? It’s not really a big deal, just mildly annoying when you die just after saving while trying to look at the screen. - Never really did anything for this, I know we talked about it eventually that you could use S (well, skip key) to save as well which is the alternative in this area.
Save 2
Also may want to make sure on save placements as you can only save on top of it. No need for too much extra walking time. - This was a good point and they should be cleaned up.

Screen 3
Save 2
Save placement

Screen 4
Save 1
Save placement

Screen 5
Multiple places, but I appreciate that you can go back if you realise you missed placing a bomb or a shot in most cases.
Also good job on the arrow. Maybe not noticeable enough? But only for those looking at the screen from the start, it’s pretty clear when you get there not to jump to the right.

Screen 6
Save 1
Save placement? I guess you can remove one block to the left to move it over.
Save 2
Save placement, although I’ll admit I didn’t notice it on this one.

Screen 7
Save 1
Could move save one block to the right to make movement a little easier.
Save 2
I want to say save placement as well, but I kinda feel like the extra space is useful on this for some reason, not sure why.
Cool use of blocks on this screen in general.

Screen 8
Save 1
Last two jumps of this save can be a pain to get through quickly, especially after having to wait for all the bombs from the blocks. Maybe move save 2 to this spot, or just nerf them. - Some of the jumps/save positions on this screen were moved around.
Save 2
I’m still not entirely sure about some of the secrets, but I only gave the first jump a few attempts. - This one is something totally different these days.

Screen 10
Save 1
Not sure on the last jump due to not being able to bonk. I had some trouble understanding it while playing as miku. - This one was changed around and doesn't require as specific a walkoff and has some bonkability.
On playing it a bit more, maybe this is just me as well? You just have to double jump earlier instead of later.

Uuuuuuuuh, there appears to be an extra screen in page up/down between screens 7 and 8 in-game, with no in game music. Just checking it isn’t supposed to be in game.
Also is this area supposed to have more than 10 screens? Seems to have 13 then the boss. - Not sure I ever addressed this, but that screen was retired but left there (just out of cycle, only accessible via devtools) because the stage was kind of long and the screen was boring.

Screen 11
Save 2
While you can full jump strat the corner, I wouldn’t be surprised if Para complains about this. I think it’s fine regardless though. - This was changed to not intimidate newer players.
Save 3
Near the end, top left, while it’s a nerfed ceiling diamond, I’m still not entirely sure about it. It’s probably fine? I seem to be able to get through it consistently enough. - Yeah these are mostly minispikes at this point and are pretty straightforward with some changes to this save.

Screen 12
Save 1
Save seems like it’s here entirely for the star, rest of the save is basically irrelevant in comparison. Maybe that’s intentional, but considering the stars autosave when you get them, I’m not sure. Although on the flip side, having to wait for the bomb every time at the start of a full screen would be a bit frustrating.
And having done some of save 2, having to do it all in one go would be a pain. Not sure how to fix this, if you should.

Being able to place infinite bombs is fun :).

Boss
Not starting, because I’m using bombs I guess?
Tester is blind, cannot see big ass block in middle of screen

Nice Call Me It final boss music (few people will recognise that, I’m sure) - The fact you called it that bothers me. That said I replaced this song because it was the only vestige of mainstream video game music I had and I kind of wanted to avoid that (part of my goal was to try and mitigate the homongeneity of fangame music to some extent, especially adventure games that are just choc full of megaman, kirby, mario, touhou, final fantasy etc)
Can’t kill frost nymphs before they use the power thing? I guess this is ok, it’s pretty clear when you can hit when you know about it.
Line attack can be a little rough when you’ve just placed a bomb at a Nymph and it covers all routes of escape. Dunno, after more time this is probably fine. - This was changed a bit at some point, not sure if it was before or after you did it, to give a lot more openings.
Kind of wish bombs blew up on contact with the boss. - Made this happen.
I think my complaints can just be summed up again as “worried it takes too long”, but I can’t judge for myself, if Sunbla says it’s fine I’d trust him. - He had a couple of issues with this boss but not specifically on the length. The flow on this boss has been adjusted somewhat since then with an additional secondary attack and a more sequential flow. Its also a bit easier and offers more opportunities to maintain a constant pace. I think by now you've probably seen the kind of boss duration I'd been shooting for and it isn't really out of line of that though that boss length is probably higher than a lot of adventure games.

Stage 4
Being able to head back to the hub mid-area is really useful.
“Getto move the ball” Spelling error on middle left sign. - Text updates all over should have this included.
“Green spikes won’t kill you but will destroy the ball” Rephrase maybe -
Minesweeper needle?! Holy crap, that is glorious.
Bottom right, I was going to mention you should have a dot to point out where the middle of the spike is, but you beat me to it. - I can't take credit for this one, this was also sunbla's idea, he had a lot of good contributions to this area regarding ensuring the player has the right information/feedback from the game.
3 rooms seems like a good length for the areas.

Top Left
Room 1
Make switches more obvious, brown on brown isn’t great, and the red/green part is too small to be noticeable on it’s own. I actually missed the bottom right one when I entered the first room. - These are silver or something now, agreed that the colors didn't contrast well.
Room 2
Not sure about the 16px at the end, probably fine. - The weird thing about balancing this room is that almost everything is optional to some degree (except the middle one which has to happen early). I think this was changed slightly since I don't care for 16pxs in general, almost all of them should be 24s throughout the whole game.

Middle Left
Room 1
Thank god the ball saves position too, and you can head back so if you save with it too close to the spike, you’re ok. - This room was changed a bit to allow a lot more two-way movement as well to ensure you don't get yourself stuck.
You can drop the ball inside a wall. Probably not a problem as you can pick it up again, but making a note of it.
Room 2
I can see people accidentally saving with the ball in a bad spot at the start.
Thankfully the balls position saves before it starts moving while you’re shooting to save, so that isn’t a problem. - I'm pretty sure we talked about the ability to use S saves for this area as well. Its certainly something that will be forgotten by people though.
It’s possible to carry the ball with you to save 2. Not sure it matters but made a note in case those green spikes at the start were supposed to stop that.
Save 3 the balls adjusted position does save, as you hit the save after the ball finishes moving. Previous saves you had to stand on top of them to save so the adjustment didn’t matter.
Was a little worried about the tbone diagonal at the end, but I think it’s fine.
Room 3
Ball adjustment makes a difference here, as you’ll probably save once on top of the save, then again at the edge. The new start for the ball doesn’t matter in this case thankfully but it shows the point of the importance of this.
Save 2
Not sure on the 16px at the top. Mostly because it’s a longer save in comparison to the rest of this area. Might be fine though, I’m unsure.
Also, is there anyway to save and keep holding the ball when you reset? Only a mild annoyance. - This was left out due to potential for a couple other interactions.
Save 3
Not entirely sure on the point of the green spikes, the gate isn’t harder/easier than the bottom route to me. Maybe it’s easier to come back though. (Issue being you have to double jump fairly low to not die, I think?) - Options, or something.

Bottom Left
Room 1
No save blocker on right side, not sure if intentional. - This was intentional (and changed to some extent, but still intentional) to allow more efficient saving for stars.
Oh, there’s shadows to show where they’ll next spawn. Make those clearer.
Oh, shadows disappear when you get all the items. Maybe make that clear on the sign beforehand. Wasn’t sure how I’d be able to get out before I saw that. - This only really impacts the first screen and is still not really explained, the idea was that people should be aware of planning around it but just being 'generous' on the first save to not create a chokeable shadow drop at the end of a long first room.
Room 2
Save 1
Move save blocker further left so you can save next to the jump. - This was done and has some implications about how you spawn the shadows but its fine.
Shadows can’t spawn while you’re on top of them? Maybe a good idea, although also wasn’t clear until I checked. - Not sure we ever went over the mechanics on this but the gist of it is that they spawn once you move a certain distance away from your last shadowpoint, and likewise solidify at a slightly further, other range.
Left path is definitely harder than right, definitely move save blocker.
Save 2
Save 1 feels a lot harder than this one due to the left path. The two jumps specifically being the low jump from right to left through the bottom, and not being able to bonk with your double jump from left to right along the top. - There were some minor balances on this screen overall to smooth this whole thing out.

I can definitely see people getting annoyed with where their mikus get placed, but I don’t think there’s anything you can do about it, they’ll just have to learn to work it better. - Obviously this stage is supposed to be a bit of a thinker, even though this one seems more like straightforward platforming, managing your save positions and movements plays into making it work best in your favor. This was intentional and I did put some thought into your comment here because its less direct and the exact mechanics are not obvious and that's dangerous but I found long ago in my own initial testing that by making it a bit less strict people shouldn't struggle too much.

Top Right - Just going to put a note about this area in general. I was hoping for a bit more feedback on it because this area was totally redone after sunbla's playthrough because I decided I did not like the previous iteration. I was pretty happy with how it turned out so I took this as mostly 'its fine' but if theres anything extra to be said, it would help.
Room 3
Not sure about minispikes on the inner left path. Specifically the downwards facing spike making the nerfed diagonal. - There were some minor changes to this screen too just due to the fact that its quite a long save.

Middle Right
Room 1
Save 2
Bottom left “tbone” (with block for a ceiling), not sure about this, it’s kind of annoying to get past. Seems you have to be right next to the spike before you double jump, or just double jump low. - This spike was moved down to make this less awkward.
Rest of the saves feel easy in comparison to that jump though, it felt like the challenge was meant to be more figuring out where the spikes are than the platforming.
Room 2
No save blocker intentional? Never mind, was barely out of it when I shot.
Can’t place two spikes on top of each other in the same direction. Good.
Room 3
Save 3
Bonk jump.drop is slightly annoying, but probably not worth changing? I feel like this is just on me.

Player enjoyment will depend on enjoyment of solving the puzzle. I loved it. Platforming is mostly simple with exception of the “tbone” jump otherwise. - Yeah, this is one of my favorite sections but it was one of sunbla's least favorite. That said, I don't think he ever quite understood it and ended up brute forcing the whole thing. I took his advice before you got to it to add a lot more player feedback aspects to assist with understanding (the color highlighting indicating whether or not you have the correct number of spikes next to a block is a big part of that)

Bottom Right
Room 2
Save 2
I feel it’s a little too easy to die from being out of range when landing on the block in the bottom left, before the 16px. I do a low jump and it’s still barely too high, combined with the rest of the save.
There are quite a few low jumps you have to do in this area to stay in range.
Room 3
Hahahahah that is so evil putting the warp so close. I like it.
Save 1
Middle right, minor skip not having to go back to the right wall with the last set of 5 minispikes. Have to stay very low though, not worth fixing.
Save 2 and 3
Lack of save blockers on left side (and right side for save 3)
Maybe nice to make a note of the walkoff align (the wall right next to the minispikes), not sure if it was intended though.
Not sure if I skipped intended route for save 3. - There's some skips that can be done, one of them was substantial and closed off, the rest are questionable to whether or not they're worth it.

Boss
…oh…that’s an axe… - Probably the closest thing to a trap you get around here.
Maybe remove save blocker? As fight doesn’t start until you touch the page anyway, and the save disappears then. (Or just move the save)
That is one kickass song.
Sounds a bit loud compared to the calm song before it though. Adjust audio balance.
Not sure if you should make the Axe ! warning a bit more noticeable, or change the colour so you can tell what it is, as when that warning comes out you move asap or die. All the other warnings give you a bit of time to notice them, and the axe warning you don’t really know is the axe specifically at first or otherwise.
Maybe place the warning on the axe at the start as well, so the player knows what the tell is from that point onwards. Still let the player get ganked though :). - The main thing about the axe warning for me was the audio cue. I'm not sure we ever really went over this and how you felt about that but for me it was always listening for that over actually looking (outside of remembering which side its coming from).
Yeah, saw the !, thought it was the enemy spawn, not the axe. Also, I appreciate the handle not killing you, but it’s not clear until you get hit by it. I can picture some players trying to drop to the bottom to try to avoid the axe while in the water. Maybe make the handle a bit more faded than the kill part of the axe?
The ! for the floor lava disappears very quickly, maybe keep the !s on screen until it’s respective attack appears? - Timing on these was adjusted.
Yeah, I noticed by the end the axe sound effect plays before it appears too, but while the 4 enemies were spawning there was enough going on that I saw the ! in the top right and thought it was the axe, not another dude.

Not sure how players get back to redo screens if they missed secrets in any of the areas.

Dude, that is one kick ass fight, awesome job. (Also 1 spear doesn’t get destroyed by the axe at the end, do not change this, just let me know who is the first to die to it :).)

You have to press S to continue after the plot ends? Also a bit confused by the story, did “her” mean the kid, or a character he’s chasing? And a couple of lines could be split up better, e.g.:
“The ancient submerged
bastion from (…)”
could be
”The ancient submerged bastion
from (…)” - These were all rewritten to some degree too.

Stage 5
Screen 1
Change the spike sprites to fit more with the stage here. Be wary of making them blend into the background too well, of course. - After many long days, this was finally changed after you beat the game. Hopefully it fits a bit better.
After the mini-game nonsense of stage 4, Stage 5 feels like it starts off a little plain with back to regular needle stuff. Although the extra jumps do look interesting later on. - I know we talked about this and that its kind of a 'cooldown' variety period or whatever, I think the verdict was that with the visuals being less bland this stage would fit better so hopefully that worked out.


I’m writing this paragraph at the end of stage 5. I state it during the thing but it bears re-iterating here.
I am not good at platform jumps. I swear half the time I’m jumping my head is still entirely in the platform, but I still fall to my death. I find my lack of understanding of how the hell they work infuriating.
As such, I’m not sure how good I will be at judging some of the platforming in this stage. I tried my best of course, but just keep that in mind. - Making this made me so much better at platform jumps, especially since all the small grid stuff made me fool around with each jump so many times.

The birds in the background are a nice touch.

Screen 2
The slight shadow effect is cool too, I’m sure that’ll get more noticeable further in. Not distracting at all at this point.
Save 3
I’m glad you can get a chance to save yourself at the final “rise”, because I’m not great at platform jumps and the first two are a little tricky. - Made use of that a lot myself, the jumps here are a bit tight.

Screen 3
Save 2
No save blocker on left side. Very minor thing/not too important, lets you save near the platform. - I'm okay with this, part of this is because of the importance of remembering saveblockers later in this area.

Screen 4
Not entirely sure how triple jump auto saving without you hitting a save. Can also see this causing issue later if you’re given the ability to warp out of a stage, and still keeping triple jump somehow. - Its a little silly since its stored outside of the regular saving but it shouldn't be abusable.

Screen 5
Save 1 feels like more of a warmup save for triple jump. That seems ok with me.
Save 2
I don’t know why, but I struggled a lot on this save. I can’t tell whether it’s the drop, the “two-frame” jump (it isn’t exactly that), the jump after, or my lack of ability to figure out how to reach the platform barely below the spikes, but I had a lot of issue.
Somehow 2nd tried the platform jump in the bottom left, but I’m worried about the precision of that as well, but again, I’m not great at platform jumps so I’m not sure how good my advice will be on this stage. - I think I opened this save a little bit to give a tiny bit more room, not too noticeable visually but a lot more leeway when playing.
Save 3
Comparatively free.

Screen 6
Save 1
The jump/double jump parts of the 4th platform (before landing right of the save) I feel can be a little difficult, rest of the save seems fine. - A bit more space was given here too.
Save 2
You can skip the platform jump, go back to the left (where you reached the save from) then jump up. I didn’t even notice the platform at first. Both paths seem equally “difficult”. - I hadn't noticed this myself either, but I don't think it is particularly beneficial so I'm fine with the option.

Screen 7
When jumping to enter the screen, the warp was lower than I expected so I double jumped right into the spikes that start above you. Either autosave or change the spikes. - Ah yea, I recall this note. Somehow it never happened to me when playtesting but afterwards I became quite aware of it. This whole stage autosaves on screen transition now.
Save 2
Cannot grip the first platform for the life of me without jumping into the vertical facing spike. I think it’s just an issue on my part due to lack of skill with platform jumping.
Ok I was gripping it from too high.
Save 3
Save covers spike a little. Sure I was blind and should have looked before I lept, but still. - This was shifted over for clarity!

Screen 8
Quad jump does not autosave similar to Triple jump. Solves problem I mentioned with triple jump but not sure why it’s different. - This could be fixed and is a side effect of my changing how it was done halfway through but these rooms are free anyway.

Screen 9
Was going to point out no save blockers…well played.
I think you did the darkness/brightness well too. Not too dark that you can’t see the spikes, not too bright that it doesn’t seem like nighttime. Good job.
Light around the player is also still a good level.
(Also shooting stars have the light, thumbs up)
Lol quadruple gate. - These are actually 40px gates, such nerfs, but hard to notice that difference with the layout.

Screen 10
Save 2
Cool drop at the start. It’s simple, but long drops are always fun for some reason.
You can skip the last platform with a 16px gap, which is quite a lot easier than the regular route.
…Ok I went back with a different align, maybe that’s a 11/12px gap and tab gave me the right align. Not sure what align you’re supposed to have to make it work, but I think you get it when you enter the room. - I adjusted this so it looks less possible, there's normally no align shifting in this area (since theres no walls) and that makes tab testing a bit awkward. I had that experience myself which led me to spend a lot of time being careful about jump design since I had to make sure I wasn't off the standard align.

Screen 11
Save 1
May be possible to skip going to save 2, but it’s pretty hard.

Boss
Well that is one hell of an entrance.
Phase 3 – nice Justice Guy gustav style avoidance section
I first tried up until the orange damage phase.
I think the red damage phase may be a bit too easy? I feel like the orange balls should fire out the blue bullets a little more frequently, however I don’t know how much would be good before it gets too “wally”.
In a sense, it would be better if they just didn’t exist, and the red circle wall things were more frequent.
“many is 239 jumps” LOL HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA. God damn that is good.

When the only problem I can think of is “one attack may be too easy” I think you did well.
(Or possibly it’s more simple than I’m giving it credit, but because it lasts a while I feel it’s fine. More of a “choke heavy” sort of issue there, which is ok.)

- This boss wasn't changed too much. Its a fair bit easier than it was in the olden days and I'm okay with it probably being easier than the previous boss since grinding infjump bosses will kind of wear people out. That and with the new leaderboards, it can be super difficult to optimize your jump totals and that's obviously something people are going to do.


Stage 6
Screen 1
Oh yeah, only double jump now, got used to multiple.
Nice tree with fruit on it. Admittedly was a little unsure if it would kill me, although makes sense it doesn’t. - Had to make sure it looked different enough that it doesn't make people worry about that too much. I'm hoping at this point its fair for people to assume its not a trap game.
Hell of an abstract theme you got going on here.
Can be a little hard to see the spikes on the abstract killers with the dark background. By far not difficult, but I can see some deaths getting blamed on it when you’ve misjudged a jump. Not sure if anything really should be changed in relation to this, I do see you have lamps around to help with that. - I've made sure all the obstacles in this stage remain foreground from lighting to ensure visibility (unless you change the lighting settings, but that's your own fault and it warns you about this). I also went through the sprite work and tried to add more contrast to the thorns and such on obstacles to make sure their boundaries are clear.

Screen 3
So far, the saves have felt noticeably easier than the stage 5 saves. I realise part of the difficulty is the abstractness of the “spikes”, and I have real problems with platform jumps, so this is probably mostly me, but making a note. - This shouldn't just be you, I know I brought this up briefly regarding the intended gameflow but this stage is supposed to feel calm and straightforward (and part of that is easier).
Save 1
Oh, these “platforms” are solid, got it. - That was a concern I had but I think even while it may come up that people assume they are regular platforms, the actual trouble associated with that is maybe a single death (actually the first real incident on this is recoverable too). The jump where it comes up is also designed in such a way that it wouldn't really even be a jump if they were regular platforms to hopefully make people assume that they'll have to go around it.

Screen 6
I feel like the “spikes” have gotten brighter the further I went in, guess the brightness issue I mentioned before is user dependant just getting used to it. - This is probably a factor too.
Save 2
For the first drop, are you supposed to double jump to the left/right? Because that felt much easier than double jumping at the bottom.
Actually taking the bottom route at all feels unnecessary, and not too easy. - There's options here.

Screen 8
Save 1
Doesn’t need nerfing, just making a note that I cannot seem to handle the 3rd jump. Either I jump slightly too late and the abstract part of the spike always kills me slightly sooner than I expect, or I jump slightly too early and cannot even come close to making it, as a full jump definitely doesn’t work, and I can’t seem to bring myself to do less than a full jump for double jump. - I've done that too with that jump. There's definitely some getting used to on some of these since so many people rely on specific visual cues I think and when they change, some things become harder and easier. I believe this save was changed slightly though.
I have a bit of trouble with jump 4 as well, but I know how that works, it’s mostly because I can’t get consistent attempts.
Decided to save at the jump, did it twice in a row, then beat the save…of course…Was definitely where 90% of my deaths on that save where though.
Save 2
After doing screen 9, this save felt quite a bit harder. Mostly due to the drop being the main difficulty. Maybe I was just doing a bad strat, but trying to double jump while in between the two vines was hard for me, so I was trying to double jump a little before the gap, then move left through it and weave back to the right and hope I make the landing. - This vine was made a bit narrower to give a little more space and room for error.

Screen 9
Save 1
Skip isn’t all that hard, although neither is the regular route. - I'm actually surprised by this because I always found that skip quite difficult, but perhaps I never found the right strategy.
Save 3
Maybe remove save blocker to the left, so it’s easier to just drop in to the boss. - Yeah not sure why this was ever really there.

Boss
(Part 1 apparently)
Ok, this idea seems cool.
Can’t tell how often I can shoot them, not sure when the iframes where off. Not too big a deal after playing a bit longer.
Randomly chosen enemies, interesting.
I feel like it’s difficult to judge the eagle hitbox, could’ve sworn I was far enough to the right to avoid it. - Its a griffon, gosh.
Yeah ok, the change from “swoop down” to “swoop up” makes its wings extend and kill you, got it.
Is there any way to add a counter to say how many enemies remain that you need to kill? Can’t tell how my progress is on this boss. I get that every enemy has to spawn, and it’s a set number of each, but would still be nice to be able to tell. - A 'healthbar' was added for this as this was a very valid point.

Part 2
For the wizard who summons green orbs, maybe spawn him on the top platform (not sure on left/right side, probably left so it still has a reasonable chance of killing you). When he’s on the middle platform you have to drop down to properly avoid his attacks. He is the only “add” that spawns that you have to change platforms for. - This was moved over, I liked that approach a bit better since it did feel like the goal was too much about racing him and that's silly.
I really like the final attack, never heard of staring at a gorgon being a GOOD idea after all.
The bar feels pretty lenient, but that’s ok and the fact that it’s there adds quite a bit, it’s also actually quite challenging just dodging the stuff she’s throwing at you anyway. - The gimmick here was made a little bit stricter since it was frankly a nonfactor a lot of the time.
I think the snake tail also killing you during this attack though can be incredibly difficult at times. There are a LOT of green bullets on screen.
Hmm, on replaying it a bit, maybe I just got unlucky, hard to say. - I changed the rng distribution on this to be more even, it definitely had a bit too much variance.

Stage 7
Screen 1
Save 2
Start the first red circle from the left (better cycle), not the right. - This was adjusted.
Managed to save while I missed the landing Kappa. Save blocker is fine where it is though, seriously. - Sometimes you gotta reward the guy who takes that shot.
Save 3
People may not have done the switch minigame so may not realise you can press up at the switch. Not hard to figure out but making a note. - The up arrow that appears when you're at a switch should be a bit more visible than it used to be.
The constant camera movement can be a bit of a pain, especially when it’s on a jump on the same row you’re on (not actually moving up/down). Not sure how you can fix this, I know there are other types of cameras though. - I changed this to be less jarring I believe. There's definitely differing opinions on this. I actually didn't realize gamemaker had a built in function for this when I made my own, I think most people use that since its actually pretty solid and handles most of these concerns but I ended up just replicating it which meant I wasted a lot of effort for no real reason. Oh well.
E.g. Save 5
Even when I’m bonking for the first jump the camera jolts a little bit which can put me off making that first landing. Optimally the camera shouldn’t need to move at all until I’m on the right side of the room. I’m afraid I don’t have much experience with this part of fangames though, maybe ask PatrickGH3 about it (Patrick#0303 on discord).
Save 7
Don’t need to take the upper-right route when you start. Can head to the second block then full jump left instead of continuing up right. - Hadn't noticed this and it was much too easy of a skip so I changed it.
Save 10
Another example of the camera, spamming jump against the platform should not need to shift the camera at all, yet it does.
Save 11
No save blocker on right, noted in case it was an oversight but would recommend keeping it like this so it’s easier to attempt the star. - Yea this was intentional.
Actually, make a save blocker really far over, so people don’t try to save jump to save 12, and possibly save lock themselves. (Possibly directly above the entrance to the star corridor thing.) - This was also a valid point, not sure if its possible but better to not take that risk.
Save 13
Similar to what I said on the previous switch save in this area, people may not realise switches save position when you save. I forgot for a moment.
Save 14
A little surprised it’s so short.
Save 15
Never mind.
Save 16
Died to the gate, curse you for remembering save blockers. - A number of spots in this narrow section were nerfed, the really narrow corridor stuff can feel grindy and I didn't want it to hit that point.
Save 17
Would recommend removing save blocker so you can just jump straight up to the staircase instead of having to jump ¼ of a block every time. - Yeah, that saveblocker wasn't doing anyone any good.
Save 18
Maybe save blocker on left side to avoid minor cheese, but your call. - Nah, this is supposed to be a cheesy section.

Uh…stage 8? But not really…Screen 2? New gimmick area now, basically, this’ll be screen 1 if I refer to it.
Screen 1
“press x to toggle between view modes”
I stopped reading at “press x to toggle” then got confused why the spikes wouldn’t turn back on. Recommend changing wording to “change between view modes”.
Also got confused when it said “default is toggle” because I thought “well yeah, it just said press x to toggle”.
Also, realised on screen 3 but noticed on screen 2, left wall isn’t at an angle. Just a flat surface, so character gets pushed along it instead of shifting left. - Yeah there's some oddities with this whole thing and I wasn't sure the best way to implement it which is why I kept it from impacting the platforming much.

Screen 2
While pressing up down moves you left/right slightly while on the ground (and the spikes as well), it does not do so in the air. Was wondering why the first jump was killing me. However I don’t know if this should be fixed or not, as being shifted in the air may be awkward for some.
Also possible to shift and get stuck in the ceiling while jumping. Although re-shifting gets you unstuck. - I spent a lot of time chasing this down and hopefully fixed all of it, the coding for this whole area is a mess.

Screen 3
Save 1
Could move the save blocker a little further right.

Boss
You know what? I COULD play the boss. Or I could god mode and just enjoy the hell out of this song. - This obviously has nothing to do with the game but I love bands that offer split tracks and instrumental versions from their songs because it feels like they're saying heres some great music, try and make something greater with it rather than a lot of artists that it feels like their version is the only version. Its kind of like the power of collaborative creativity as well as building upon others contributions which is cool, and very relevant to what the fangame community essentially is.
Maybe have the shield around the character before they hit save, so you can tell what colour you are starting with and can choose. You can change the colour without seeing it anyway, may as well be able to tell what you’re doing.
Probably good that you don’t get shifted left/right with the layers here. - Yeah, felt the same which is why I changed that for the boss. Its a tiny breach of consistency but I think its easy enough to adjust to.

I double killed it…
Honestly, not sure what sunblas issue with the boss is, I guess it varies on a player-by-player basis. The hardest part I had was remembering whether down or up was the button I wanted to press. The actual attacks and keeping track of the other bullets seemed fine to me.
The biggest issue I had was a couple of times after killing a dragon I died and couldn’t tell what killed me, but that’s probably just me missing where the thing was. I doubt anything spawns as invisible.
Overall it probably took me about 15-20 mins, so I feel like it should be harder considering it’s boss 7, but considering how long sunbla took I guess it’s fine? - I was inclined to mostly leave it because of that fact too. Its something different and that's always dangerous to make too hard. That said, this boss used to be much, much more difficult but I cut out a bunch of stuff because I realized it would be too much learning (it also necessitated a specific approach where reducing them to 50%+1hp then 1 hp then going for a clean triple kill became way more realistic - kind of the Crimson approach to some degree and I didn't want to replicate that of all things.) - the boss extra mode reintroduces some additional attacks for this boss (as it does with a number of them, though in this case its more moving back to where it had been originally where for the others I had to add additional things as buffs).

The snarky plot when you miss the key is goddamn brilliant. I am so glad that exists. - I'm glad you like it. I felt like the best application of a light story is levity since there's no way you're going to make something dramatic or particularly interesting out of that little.

Stage 8
Screen 2
It’d be nice if the save was on the platform next to the green line. It’s possible to jump from the save over the first three spikes, but a minor edit (also a save blocker if this is done).
Better idea, just raise the blocks the save starts on, so it’s on level, unless that screws with the door graphic…yeah ok I’ll leave it up to you, this isn’t a major thing by far. - Initially this was over to the right because there wasn't space on that level but I changed the jump since then and it makes more sense to move it up as you said.
Screen 4
Something looks off with the graphics behind the spike on the right. The place where there was an accidental buff before. Also the block just before it is still raised by 8px compared to the mirrored block on the left, so the jump is still a little different. - I think this is properly mirrored now.
Screen 5 (the tower)
Can’t read all of the sign as it gets cut off by the top of the screen and the darkness. - Should be fixed.
Also “There is a star at the bottom of the room. That requires going relatively fast.” Don’t need a second sentence here, can be one long sentence. - I think by now we see why I asked you to proofread stuff because I'm too quick and sloppy about it.
Music louder than before? I like that it’s extra hype, but not sure on sound balance. - Reduced the audio levels on this a bit, audio balancing is hard.
Screen 6 (outside the tower)
Make the text black on the grey to be easier to read?
Camera seems fine on this.

Boss
I linked a vid of something killing me that I don’t think should be. (fixed now)
I can’t even see some of the “knives” from the circle attack sometimes. Normally ones coming up from below. Maybe blending in to the clouds too much?
Yeah, the “daggers” (not sure on name) at around 50/112 are hard to see. Especially when they come up from below while a cloud is travelling upwards. They can be hard to see in the last attack too when coming form the top. The whole background has a bit of grey going on. - Yeah this whole thing is tweaked slightly but there were a number of visibility challenges since maintaining the theme is essentially leaving me working with monochrome (obviously I can't put that on anyone but myself).
After 50, when you follow the circle around, it can be very hard to go up the left hand side, as holding up doesn’t do much, and it’s very easy to jump too low and not get your jump back in time. - I've definitely been there and I decided to mostly leave it as is, there's not too much else going on here so the challenge is either trying to be precise about it here or choosing a start point where you can avoid the left side when its narrower.
Not sure if some warning should be given when the lines inside the circle expand into the windmill shape or not. - Added warnings.
Warning should be given for the very last attack when daggers come up from the floor when everything is exploding. When the shapes started exploding my first reaction was to get inside one of the bottom ones asap so I had less to dodge. - This is just gone now I think, there's been a couple more nerfs to this since I don't want this to be a sticking point with players as I think I mentioned.


Stage 9
Screen 1
Could probably move save blocker further right.
Bubbles aren’t supposed to pop on blocks? They were just vibrating there. - The vibrating thing was wrong but right, no popping on blocks as you see.
Maybe move the second sign to a better spot, so you don’t get killed by the bubble popping while reading it. - Nah, this is again one of the only quasitraps in the game and its not like its a hard section. I was actually tempted to put a 'Watch Out' at the end just to see if that confuses people til it happens.

Screen 2
Save 2
Not entirely sure why there is a block in the bottom right section that isn’t used. Was assuming a star would be hidden behind scenery, but nothing is there. - Its there as an option for people to back off in case the timing was bad to avoid acid spray.

Screen 3
Monkeys can spawn in acid. Do not die. 0/10. - Hopefully this is fixed and monkeys no longer spawn in acid. Damnable monkeys really kept wanting to go there no matter how many times I tried to stop them.

Screen 4
Save 1
I first tried the gate at the end, and it’s a fairly short segment, so it’s probably ok, but making a note of it. - Its a slightly nerfed gate too. That said this save is more about learning the timing so once you get it once even if you choke that it should be easily repeatable.
Save 2
Was a little worried about the full jump thing in the top left, but I think it’s ok too. - This was nerfed slightly but since full jump lead in works its pretty easy to execute.

Screen 6
Save 1
No save blocker
Possible to avoid right side landing on first rise if you time the bubbles right. (Can be accomplished by just rushing.) - Yeah, I'm aware of this and fine with it.
Save 2
No save blocker for the drop part. (Although not sure you could put it far enough over to keep the landing on the right side without being able to save over the spike.) But it can be used to completely skip the first bubble.
A little worried this save may be a little harder than the others. Possibly nerf “downwards plane” in bottom left of save? Not sure if that’s really a problem though. I can’t quite tell with this one. - Nerfed this save a little and put that saveblocker in so people have to do the bubble bounce.

Screen 7
Transition to screen 8, may want to be a bit careful on how close you start the player to those spikes. - Added an autosave to this.

Screen 8
Save 1
Is the save blocker supposed to be that far right? Kinda makes the first two jumps non-jumps, you may as well just remove them. - For no apparent reason this was intentional to reward those who check.
Save 2
Middle row – required two frame on the way in? You can definitely jump higher and fall in, but not sure about the difficulty on this. Can bonk and double jump if you’re fast on the way out. - Changed this up a bit to give more options, that said since you don't need your double jump its not really a required two frame.
This segment is pretty hard, but alright, game seems to be getting difficult.

Screen 9
Save 1
Interesting vstring drop.

Screen 10
Are you supposed to land before the 3rd bubble or just jump over to it? Because you can do both. - There's a couple little path changes you can do here.

Screen 11
Save 1
It’s a pretty slow wait for the bubble to spawn. Have to wait a few seconds each attempt, and it isn’t “free” after it. - Changed this to add another bubble to the mix. Since its hard to predict how fast people will go in various sections, I felt just having better bubble coverage was the solution.
Save 2
If you rush you can make the first bubble, but you have to bonk off the left side of the spike then double jump over. I imagine this is why the cycle is what it is, but would still recommend moving them “down” a couple of seconds.

Screen 12
Save 2
Maybe move up to the green bubble block, so you don’t have to jump up every time. (Could make a block directly above current position of the save, so you could place the save there without moving the green bubble.) - That did seem like better save placement.

Boss
I’m very glad the popping bubbles don’t spawn acid. - That would be gross indeed.
I was a little worried about the lightning at first but it seems alright.
Tainted waters I’m still a bit worried about. You’re pushed to the edges a lot then the water can wall you in, and one time I had the water on both - Sunbla indicated this felt a little unfair at times too, I made the water geysers a little more narrow to give more space and adjusted the timing.
 left and right with the skull in the middle and didn’t feel like I can jump anywhere. - I think with a little familiarity on this it feels like you can get around reasonably well (the bosses movements are also influenced by yours, but I don't expect people to really learn how to manipulate that).
Otherwise the biggest problem is really just at the start when there aren’t enough bubbles for manoeuvrability, which obviously solves itself quickly.


World 10
Black text is a little covered by the waterfall.
Looked further forwards, why is there a box around some text but not all, such as the one at the start of this world? - This was a persistent issue since I decided it shouldn't be standard (for some reason) and didn't add the flag everywhere. Should be consistent now.
Screen 1
Cool song.
I can’t spam shoot or shoot along with the song now :(.
…song just cuts off and repeats a little suddenly huh.
2 frame gate is ok here? I guess you can shoot it, so fine. - Tweaked this jump a bit, I put this in originally because the star was designed around shot saving, changed my mind on that but left it since it felt like an 'obvious' spot to use it, but the jump is kind of super precise without it so changed it up a bit.

Good that not shooting a spike doesn’t waste your 3-shot ammo. - Yeah, put this in somewhat later in the process because i'm terrible and got annoyed with missing shots while playtesting.


The new stage transition thing with the map is really cool! Good job. - Thanks, really happy with how this turned out.
On the intro part, maybe have a short section (maybe just one room with a giant open pit) to make the player learn the X use as well of the gun. - This seems kind of obvious that I should've done it, but for some reason I never did - definitely adding it.
What does the TBD mean under “Save 1”? - That slot is now the name associated with the savegame, TBD is the filler string I put in for saves that existed prior to the addition - you'll be able to change it post-game

Screen 5
Can be a little hard to judge where you are when jumping out of 1-block gaps due to the curved corners of the sprites. - Agreed - and edge jumps like that are annoying enough as is. Gonna try and polish up the sprites on this to alleviate the issue while still looking somewhat 'natural' since sand wouldn't form sharp corners.

I’m not entirely sure about the long save at the end of the stage. I feel like having to re-do the first half every time you want to try something at the end could get frustrating, but I can’t think of a good way to change it, if it’s even necessary. - Yeah, I have kind of the same impression which is when I decided to add the ability to scroll to view the screen to 'plan it out' but in order to test it people might feel they need to jtool it or something which I don't really want to seem necessary. My approach at this point is trying to ensure nothing is so bad so that progress feels consistent but as you indicated below, there's still a couple of rough spots to smooth out.

Another note about the song loop being…not exactly a loop. - Tweaked this a little more, the way the song plays out makes this difficult as it has a long intro (that I want to keep)/outro (that I cut).

In the long save, the bottom minispike is annoying, have to get right to the edge before you jump, recommend removing bottom one, shifting top one down 8px. (Can describe in more detail if necessary.)
Lol, nice choke gate. - Its a classic.

Screen 6
Nice idea having relatively short saves after that beast.
Save 1
Not entirely sure how I feel about the corner, probably alright. - Nerfing this a little but this shouldn't be too tough a spot.
Save 2
No save blocker.  - Good catch, moved the save up a tiny bit so people could save on the right if desired to skip doing that each time and forgot to add a blocker further right which introduced that problem.


Screen 7
You die as soon as you touch the floor? I thought you could go slightly below it? May just be remembering wrong. - You can drop about 8px below the bottom but on a high speed drop on this that makes it vstring specific and all that. Intention is that a shot gets used on this drop though it is possible without. There is the worry that it being possible rather than obviously impossible will make people grind it though, will take another look.


Screen 8
First time I’ve noticed the tileset can look a little odd sometimes. Mostly due to the thing you can climb at the start. - This is just sloppy tiling on my part, its a known issue but cleaning up tiles in this world is a little more time intensive and its on the 'finalization' list to clean up all the awkward tiling sections in this world but waiting on it since there's still potentially level design changes.


Screen 9
Literally impossible? - Should be easily doable with the bubble but I think I want to change it anyway since its kind of a nothing jump.

Could move save closer to first jump maybe.
Save 2
First jump is a little annoying with the minispikes. Maybe just me being bad. - Nah, I agree, a little too precise that it ends up feeling a little unnecessarily grindy, minor change is worth it.

Seems like you have to get right next to the ceiling to be able to double jump well, alright then. Possible with a slightly lower jump, but much harder to time the double jump to me.
Yeah I’m just gonna save past this jump for now.
…I KNEW I’d have to shoot a spike through minispikes at some point. Was completely blind to this one for way too long.

Screen 10
Is the character supposed to be behind the water spirit? - Unfortunate side effect of when I was playing with depths for signs, not really a big deal but should be fixed.

Oh, it says “free roam” in the title bar now? (Next to “Global stats” with death/time) - Free roam is the post-game mode, normally wouldn't say that unless the game is cleared but old saves default to it. This would typically have the stage death/time.


Boss
What does DifVal mean? - This is a debug value that won't show without dev functions on but its the 'core' variable for the difficulty of the map generation. Its primarily a function of progress during the fight and his power level based on how much you've been hit.

Oh my god, this is procedurally generated? That’s so cool! - Glad you like it - it was kind of a nightmare to balance/tweak so I hope its in a good spot now (and unfortunately its really hard to polish the visuals in it). FYI, additional note, this actually can generate something like 2600 distinct jumps not counting the minor pixel alignments it does (which brings it up to something like 70000)
Oh you can shoot him to lower the DifVal, good to know. - This was mentioned (although a little indirectly) by the spirit beforehand, let me know if it wasn't clear. Big concern of mine is how understandable mechanics are since its something that I can't test myself.
And bullets no longer change spikes to blocks. Alright.
So basically, if he hits 100 power, you lose, but you can save it.
DifVal also slowly increases over time…is that supposed to be the speed of the screen? - As his power increases (which correlates with DifVal) the screen moves slightly faster, in theory there's a speedrun strat that maintains a moderate DifVal for faster completion but I can't actually imagine a time in which that's worth the risk.

That’s a really hectic cool fight.
Not entirely sure on the density of the curved bullets when he gets higher power. It becomes overwhelming fast compared to the other attacks, and can cross over. - Yeah, this is a delicate number balance. Its not supposed to be entirely sustainable to have higher power levels so you should be trying to drop it as soon as possible but I'll take a look at it. I think part of the problem here is that this is straight RNG where I typically try to use weighted RNG to reduce variance so I may need to rework this a bit.

Also not sure about the red bar right at the end of the fight. I assume it’s meant to be the boss’ hitbox that juts keeps moving right? Except it just gives a huge power boost if you touch it, no kill like if you actually touch the boss. You should avoid it fine by that point anyway, but it doesn’t look great. - Shouldn't be visible, just never noticed it myself because by that point i'm usually getting out as quickly as possible. Fixed.


Also, the travel cutscene doesn’t play when you enter a world for the 2nd time. Not a big deal, don’t know if it matters to play that on revisiting worlds. - Its a trigger based on coming from the boss room, was intentionally done this way to give that feel of area progression.


World 11
Cool map
Not sure I’ll be able to say “screen x” for this stage.
I like this choice a lot.
Maybe make a quick way to get back to your previous seal (or the start of the world if you haven’t reached a seal) if you decide you want to use the sub instead of regular kid at some point? - So this is available post-game, though I was considering some option for during the game (just because I don't necessarily want to force repeating sections but with the path it happens, though not substantially)
Oh damn, the map shows the platforming accurately too, nice. A little difficult to see where the saves are on it, but still can just make them out. - Didn't really think about the value of that, might highlight the saves a bit just for that little touch.
Possible to get stuck if you take the first save in the water area, go back for the sub, then die. - Good catch on this, probably will force autosave on returning to a 'safe' room since otherwise variables get mixed.
Oh, your missiles can hurt you as well.
Top left seal - Spikeform
“Seal of Spikeform” text needs a full stop. “Each room you will spawn standard In spikeform, …”
Also, what does standard mean? It’s easy enough to guess, but it’s not entirely clear, although I can’t think of a better way to phrase this. - Will review, I'm not sure I proofread those descriptions much and my ability to put thoughts into words in one try is frequently questionable.


Screen 1
Save 1
Good way to do the first switch btw. No way to avoid the spikes after hitting it, so even those that don’t read/understand will know.
Save 2
Lol, can 4.5 for the switch.
Not entirely sure about the corner again, but eh. I can explain my thoughts better if asked. - So I had a similar feeling about this but you can also backgrab the last swapper on spawn and ended up leaving it in so people can feel like they cheesed the corner. Its probably not the best line of thought but nonetheless.
Cool that you give the option for blocks/spikes to be safe at the end.

Screen 2
Are you supposed to be able to go right at the start at the top? I guess it doesn’t matter as you need the switch anyway.
Oh, never mind, it could be used to skip the first half of the screen. Put a minispike on the left side of the block or something? Maybe you can still make it even with that. - Yeah I'm not sure why that block was there at all. Maybe I misclick added it at some point and never noticed.

Screen 3
Really liking the music in this area. Very chill.
Save 2
Thank you for no save blocker.
On the flip side, if you try saving while on a spike after having flipped what kills/safe, you are basically savelocked and ***ed.
I’m not entiiirely sure about the plane at the end. I think it’s fine but when you hold right and don’t get in, it feels a little crappy and you aren’t sure what you could have done. - Yeah, I can see this, will toy with a couple options. Worried that nerfing it will allow some sort of weird skip shenanigans but I'm not an expert pixelogist to be certain.
Mini boss
Very cool.
Maybe some indication the spike doesn’t kill you, although it’s already non-standard looking so very much not important. Player can always check if they really care. - Yeah, I tried to make it look... different enough that it doesn't even really resemble a spike but making something that's supposed to be recognizable enough for people while not looking too threatening. That said, I think I'm okay with it as is just because its there at the start and can be checked without losing progress.

Oh wow, you have save blockers here! Probably for the best, good job. - Screwed myself a couple times doing silly things on various similar setups so hopefully I thought of all of these.

Maybe some way to tell when you’ll next do damage? Also not the biggest deal, but nice to know. (e.g. he can be a darker blue, or red or something when he’s immune to damage, flashing isn’t required) - I actually implemented something for the final boss to do this (flashes healthbar color) and will probably retrofit other bosses for clarity.

I think the blocks that spawn at the bottom post-kill are supposed to let you live regardless? But there’s always a row in the way anyway, so not entirely sure on this. The block that lets you up spawned underneath the spike for me too, which was a little funny. Just something I’m noting is all. - I think when testing this I found there was a tiny window that would leave you with no line and I did this just in case.


Overworld (Name for the general area I guess)
Middle left save, good placement on save blocker.
Maybe for the seals (and the entrance in the top middle) don’t warp the player directly to the blocks. Let them swim up to it. Feels more “immersive” (I realise that sounds a little weird, but you get what I mean, feels more like you’re in a world than the dev just decided to put you here.) - I went back and forth on this. I agree that its weird (and awkward if you accidently zone back) but I also wanted it to be convenient to bounce back and forth if desired. I'll have to think about this one again.


Seal of Spacetime
Move the word box closer to the player?
Screen 1
Save 1
Damn, these things have some distance on their pull, huh.
It also seems to suddenly vanish when you get out of range as well. Was half expecting it to slow down instead of just disappear, but I can imagine that being hard to make platforming wise with all the block holes crossing over.

I like how you use the black holes to make yourself jump higher/further, that’s cool.

Screen 3
Oh jeez, these black holes are getting screwy now.
Save 2
Maybe move it down a bit, so I don’t have to drop to start the save every time.
Save 3
Hahaha, man this is weird.

Screen 4
Oh noes, corridor needle!
Save 3
Felt a bit short, was basically just two jumps, and one you can just walkoff for.
Save 4
However, I can understand, as the first jump in save 4 seems hard.
Really hard. Wow.
Good thing no-one will die to the 2nd jump in this save, right? Haha..ha…

- I hope nothing on this felt too grindy. Unlike a lot of other gimmicks its very difficult to predict exactly what will happen so I wanted stuff to be fairly lenient but I liked the weirdness of it (variety!) and it sounded like you didn't particularly struggle with any section so hopefully it works as just being a little learny (which you may have noticed is something I've tried to avoid) but not particularly difficult.


Miniboss
I’m very glad the bombs are affected by the black holes when they are.
The first bomb is probably the hardest, as it’s moved the furthest from the boss by the time the black hole spawns. The rest have a hole on screen that you can pre-move to.
Lol, had a bomb get half sucked in by the black hole, so it carried on moving with a really thin sprite.
- Yeah I might change the timing on this a bit, it felt like you were better off restarting until you got a good spawn (which isn't particularly rare or anything but still) and that's not the kind of feeling I want to have.


Overworld
Walking back on screen needs to be a little further left, teleports you one block above a spike, so you have to react fast.
Bottom left save
Save blocker supposed to be that far right?
Oh, I guess it is so easier to get the star, alright cool. - Yeah, the water needle stars I would say aren't super creative so I wanted to keep them easily accessible since it is just a needle grind to a degree.

Jeez, is this bottom left star supposed to have buffed planes? I think that’s what the left side of that secret is.
…and I get them after complaining, nice.
Bottom middle save
One spike (heading to the right) is a little hidden by the seaweed behind it. Not entirely sure about the half invert-half gate jump after that spike too, but that part seemed ok.

Seal of Structure
Yeah I would have liked it if I could have moved to the save myself instead of being teleported there. Just throws you off. - I think after looking at this I'm going to make it so if you're swimming you can swim back up, if you're in the sub then you move instantly to shore.

Screen 1
That moment of realisation when you figure out how it works.
I’m not sure I have the brain power for this section right now.

Save 2
Uh…is there a shortcut on the right side of this screen that isn’t meant to be there? - This was a bit of an overcompensation for the fact you could sort of softlock yourself into a block trigger. F2ing would clear it anyway so its a ... soft softlock? I adjusted it to be a bit less awkward.
Maybe move the save blocker slightly left, annoying to hit the first block.

Screen 2
I appreciate the blocks staying there even after you died. - There's some shortcuts associated with this, as you probably noticed. They're intentional at this point.
Save 2
Move save blocker a little further left.

Screen 3
Save 2
Bottom left F jump is deceptively difficult.
This save in general seems harder than the others platforming wise. - There's a lot of optional block movements that can make this simpler, but I think the elevated diagonal moving to the right side is annoying so going to nerf that.

Screen 4
Are you required to do a ledge jump to get to the left side? Because I don’t see how else you get there.
Oh I’m an idiot, you can just shoot through the spikes. Don’t even have to do the platforming on the left side.
- This should actually be blocked off, but no ledge would be required. You can jump off a block 32px lower and be fine. May require some readjustment of the middle generator as you go, but that's intended.

Miniboss
Oh it isn’t blue now.
Probably the easiest miniboss. Took me 2 or 3 tries.
- Yeah, none of these should be too hard, just to mix it up a little.

Overworld
Oh the map crosses off complete seals, nice touch.
Far middle right save
Not entirely sure about no save blocker, maybe remove the “half invert” spike right next to the save. - Agreed on this, it doesn't really do anything useful.
The ceiling directly above it. Tiling issue? - Good catch, I'm sure its not the last minor tiling issue.
Closer middle right (closer to the middle, I don’t know how to describe the difference between these two)
Far middle right to close middle right felt a little difficult, especially with the two options at the end. - That's fair, any problem areas in the hub I'd like to iron out. I want the hub area to feel moderately easier than the seals.

Seal of Size
And time for dotkid needle. I’d be curious to know what Sunbla said about this section. - So it seems that people have really varied experience with dotkid, which makes sense since its not that common. There were a couple sections that were distinctly more difficult when he played through it that have been adjusted. My concern is that the difficulty of the area got progressively easier when he went through it so there were some more substantial adjustments along the way.
I’ll admit I always get a little wary of dotkid needle, because it looks so dense, and I don’t have much experience with it. - Yeah, sunbla said something similar in that he felt there was two approaches to dotkid. Standard jumps that would normally be extremely hard made reasonable with dotkid, or really dense ones that really play off the dotkid and that the latter was more complicated to make. I'm not a fan of the former so I did go for the latter but its definitely had some balancing issues.
Screen 1
Save 2
Really bad at the gate/tbone jump half way through. Seems like it’s just me though after checking. - I think a minor nerf here is due. I think this is a similar case to what I get with dotkid - its easy to pull off most of these jumps when you focus on them but in the flow of a save, they become a lot more problematic.
Might be some complaints about the 5 minispike thing too, but you can double bonk and still make it, so it’s fine. - Yeah, think this looks harder than it is.
Lol, dot changes colours depending on sprite, nice. - One of those little things I thought to throw in there.
Save 3
Can’t tell if the minispike on the final drop is ok or not. - Think i'm going to flip sides on this, the point of it was to make the player need to position themselves on the way down, moving it to the other wall lets you hug the wall on the way down with a lit more leeway before being 'punished' since the left spike comes much sooner.

Screen 2
Save 1
No saveblocker - gives you the option to let you set up the drop a bit easier, think I'll leave it.

Screen 3
Save 1
Same double minispike edge jump as one I mention in world 10. Being dotkid may make telling if you’re at the edge easier or harder, depending, but you HAVE to be at the edge or a full jump won’t get past. It’s possible without a full jump, but pretty close and not easy.

Screen 4
Save 1
Very thankful you can save on the ground still.
This save seems hard, but I can’t tell if it’s just me and dotkid. - This save sunbla found tough too, so I don't think its just you. I changed the jump he felt was the problem but I think its still quite long. Going to nerf the end jumps a bit, its probably still a bit harder than most but people should be able to close it out better once they get most of the way through which tends to be a satisfying feeling.
Save 2
No saveblocker

Miniboss
Dotkid miniboss. Nice. Seems good.
Oh there’s sound effects when they spawn bullets. Was that the same for the other three? Maybe make that a little louder. - These are in all of them and used to be too loud, maybe I overcompensated in quietening it.
…Apparently it’s possible to save yourself in the ground. Maybe raise the save a little. I’ve no idea how I managed that. Can’t even replicate it, maybe I just hit tab? Idk. - Tab will stop you from putting yourself in the ground, so it must've happened some other way. Found it, seems to happen if you managed to save on the same frame you reset and do it repeatedly. Vaguely similar (albeit opposite) to boshy save hovering I think, happens only with the way dotkid is coded. Should be fixed now though.

Overworld
Not sure if the entrance to the castle should be at the top or the bottom. I’d like it to make a nice loop around the whole area, but now I’m backtracking from top right to bottom middle. I guess if I’d thought it through I could have started top right/left then gone to the other top corner.
Overall not really an issue specifically, but worth mentioning how it makes me feel. - This is something that has bothered me too, but I never came up with a solution I was happy with.

Actually, a real point. After having used regular kid to swim around the whole maze (I remember Sunbla used the sub), I now have to use the sub regardless. Not sure if it’s ok to let the kid get to the castle without the sub first but I’m guessing not considering how the boss works. Not sure on whether there is a fix to this if it even should be. - He swapped back and forth based on the stars. The boss does necessitate the sub but I actually made it autoload you into the sub when you approach the save (related to postgame quick access) so its an option. The main thing is that allowing transition between sub/non-sub in the hub area I think will open up some weird save interactions. The sub also allows you to plow your way through that half stretch with basically no worry, so its kind of done to motivate people to do that rather than repeating sections.

Boss
Oh suddenly my sub has some powerups. Can I shoot infinite missiles now? It certainly seems like I can.
Nice effect on the text disappearing.
That is a lot of tentacles. - Hoping it becomes quickly apparent than managing the tentacles is more efficient damage wise and more important than just shooting the boss.
Maybe don’t spawn the character so far away so that you don’t have to move up-left every time you want to start the boss?
Oh, maybe I should just save further up-left, this seems like a “0,0” issue on the sub sprite though. Maybe this is why the first save in the overworld broke too.
Saved further up-left, every time you resave it moves further down-right. Yeah try fixing this. - This is a new bug because I changed the way the sub spawns off loadgame, didn't even notice it myself (since it only happens at ths boss anway). Its fixed now.
Shooting missiles up/down is hard. - So this is something that I definitely had to get used to, and maybe it takes more time than it should. The way it works is that if you're moving below a certain speed it shoots straight out (left/right) so that tiny movements that are hard to read won't necessarily impact your missile fire. I think to remedy this i'm going to reduce the threshold for that speed, so that slighter movements up/down will fire as expected.
The rock spam attack (giant squid spawns on a wall, many rocks from that wall) might be a little too dense? Especially if you’ve left a few enemies up, but it’s probably ok? - Realistically, things should get rough when you leave a few enemies up but I think I'd agree that I take more hits there than any other attack, going to nerf it a little.
Shooting missiles is hard in general. I swear I’m holding up and yet they go up-left/right. Or I’m not holding anything and they go downwards because I have barely any momentum in that direction.
Moved straight up. Missile went straight right. Twice.
He sometimes throws out rocks at the end of a laser attack. Not sure why. - Rocks appear from the walls anytime he burrows in or out.

As for the boss’ difficulty. It seems alright, doesn’t take too long to kill, mostly just the control frustrations mentioned above, maybe the rock spam is a bit dense, but it’s probably alright? Otherwise good. - This boss should feel easier, generally, than most others and I think with some polishing of the controls as you mentioned will help with that. It'll definitely be a bit steeper learning curve for people who skipped over the sub for the whole duration prior to this.
The control issues do make it objectively better to start with the squid on the wall instead of the ceiling though, so you can actually hit with missiles.

I died at literally 1/1000 hp OpieOP. - Is that better or worse than double killing I wonder...


World 12
I have to jump at the door to open it. Can’t be on the ground. - Conceptually the keyhole is in the middle of the door, this admittedly isn't obvious but I felt like everyone would try it. I drew one into the sprite with my mad art skills.
Ok, this is cool.

Top left
Top left gear (closest to start) might be a little annoying. Probably fine as you can choose to do it early if you prefer, but just noting it.
Oh, timer doesn’t end until you leave the chamber, got it. First thought was that it’d be after you touch all the gears.

Bottom left
F-jump to middle left gear might be a little harder than intended? Considering this is an area you have to go fast, trying to reach this from either the right on the bottom can be a bit hard. While this is the final world, I’m not sure on this still, doesn’t need a major change however.
Ok, maybe I overestimated it from the right.
Yeah ok, it’s probably fine, it’s easier than it looks…my bad. - Yeah, all of these (except the bottom right) have a few paths around them. Some of the jumps are trickier depending on which route you take and have enough of a time buffer you can dodge problem jumps if desired. The issue I think is that people will naturally want to be going as fast as possible and may not be willing to make those concessions since its difficult to know that you have that leeway.

Final times (after 1 clear)
Top left – 30
Top right – 27
Bottom left – 39
Bottom right – 42
Total time – 138
I was thinking of mentioning that you may be able to nerf this, but that’s actually sort of close, so I guess 150 is alright. - I'm actually thinking of rebuffing this a bit. Now I expect that players with speedrunning experience will probably hit the star range first try, its a pretty big gap. The opening requirement is pretty free if you're trying to go fast at all. The latter part I probably don't want to change, since I wouldn't want that to be a hold up. The original star cutoff time was 135 which felt a bit strict and I think sunbla got a 132 his first time around. Think i might move it to 140, this makes it mathematically clean too since its exactly 80% of the base time instead of 83.3% (though 5/6 is pretty clean too).

Screen 2
Ok, explosion kills you. Good. :D
Also I like that there was a song change.
Huh, interesting song, didn’t expect the vocals

Screen 3
I was a little worried about the “gate” in the top left and the drop after, but you can practice them in game reasonably enough and I got them consistent very quickly, so I think they’re fine. - Yeah, I think this looks a bit harder than it is.
For the small blocks, you can actually land on the ledge right next to them, may need to make them slightly bigger. I don’t think it’s a problem on this screen, but I’ll point out if it causes issue/shortcuts later. - Yeah this is done just to play nice with gamemaker collisions really, fairly certain I've checked anywhere it could cause a problem.

Screen 4
Save 1
Save is a little hard to see, although you know it’s there somewhere (because of course it will be). - This is an interesting issue that I never really thought about because like you said, you know its there. Making it a little lighter for contrast is probably good though.
Seemed to struggle a lot with the last two jumps on this save. I think they’re fine but I don’t know why I was so bad at them.
Maybe the “don’t bonk” one at the end could be changed a little. - I think I can agree enough with this to nerf it a little. I've certainly blown that jump more than enough times.
Save 2
Same here for visibility, except some may not assume it’s there. - Will do the same on this, non-start of room saves are more visible due to the lighting but fangame players are notorious for not really looking ahead so I think its probably good to make it more visible.
Completely separate thing, but it’s been on my mind for a while. Is there a way to change the save blocker to something more thematically appropriate? Something that you’d think of that would stop bullets? I’m not entirely sure what to say on this, but the grey block is…”eh”. You know what I mean.
- Sunbla mentioned the same thing and its something I've thought about but never came up with anything better for, so any ideas would be much appreciated. Its certainly a little thing but I agree that its enough to feel out of place.

Just found out you can enter <blank> for the name at the start of the game. Are the leaderboards going to be used for something? - Leaderboards are there for people to waste time with as they see fit. Retrofitted saves (aka tester saves) don't process at this time (or any completion in Free Roam mode) but if you view the map via the pause menu you should be able to see the minor amount of testing data I have in there. There's some leaderboard stuff for post game and for general stage running - deaths, time, jumps and movement distance. Jumps is straightforward, and only updates on save so its about pathing your jumps rather than necessarily executing perfectly. Likewise with distance, which may be somewhat reminiscent of Classic. Numbers are actually logically a little off but its just based off the fact that the characters are about 160 cm tall.

Maybe raise the save by a block and put in a save blocker? Saves having to jump up a block every time you restart, and I seem to suck at the first diagonal a lot OpieOP.
Touched a wall, guess I had a bad align for the diagonal somehow. I tabbed through a bit so that’s probably how.
Damn, this is a tough save.
I practiced a jump half way through a little then first tried the rest, but I seem to die quite a lot at the early parts. I think this was more an issue on my part, but I can see people struggling a little when trying to rush certain jumps like the 3rd last one (single spike onto a block, this was the one I practiced a little even though I know how it works from other games). - I think this save is probably a bit tough, I'll play around with it.

Screen 5
Save 1
Not sure if I was doing this right, as I always waited for the first TNT to explode to land on the blocks. This meant the 2nd would normally explode on my head but I could still run out from it after the blocks stopped. - I use the same strat, think it might be a little harder to time but its not so preicse that thats a problem.
If you did a 4.5 you could reach the end even after the TNTs have exploded :). - 4.5 strat that costs time, seems not worth it.
Save 2
Lol at the save blocker being so far right, nice. - Reward those who try!
Oh god that’s a lot of flames.
God damn it, nearly first tried it then somehow went through one flame. - Nice, Sunbla got thrown off by this one quite a bit but he seems to do worse with more puzzle type segments.

Screen 6
Save 1
Damn, alright, needle getting difficult here. I guess the difficulty in the last save was figuring out a good route, but I got it immediately.
Ok, I think it looked harder than it is.
Maybe double check the drop, I think it’s fine but I can’t tell if the problem is me or not. Possibly flip the minispikes if so.
A little wary of the 2nd last drop as well (jump off the block with the minispikes then through the nerfed diagonal). I think it’s ok, but it’s made significantly easier with the walkoff align than having to try to setup bonking on the block. - I think I'll change it to not need the walkoff.
Save 2
Diamond isn’t the greatest thing in the world to start with. It’s not bad, just “eh, it exists, alright”. - Yeah, I might tweak it a tiny bit but not too worried about it and at this point its a little relevant for timing.
The rest of the save is cool though.

Screen 7
Move save blocker slightly further right? - Yeah not sure why this needs a saveblocker at all, think it used to be different.

Screen 8
Save 1
I am surprisingly ok with this corner. Not sure why. - Its easy enough to setup since you have a whole spare jump which is why I'm fine with it too.
Huh, the final drop is a little deceptively hard. Alright then.
Save 2
Almost beat this save in first couple of tries, rushed too much on the small gap to fall past at the end :(. - Nice, I actually have a tough time with this one but I think its just because I'm bad at sections with a lot of moderate difficulty jumps, not sure anything is fundamentally that difficult here.

Screen 9
Save 1
Not entirely sure about the bottom middle part (just before the 2nd TNT). Having to start the single jump is like rushing a corner, although it can arc over the spike very nicely after if you time it right.
Trying to get into the gap is kind of hard as well actually, although admittedly you are home free after you pass it.
Starting the drop before it also seems to cause me a bit of issue, but I put this solely down to myself.
Ok, scrap the problem with trying to get into the gap, I may have been double jumping waaaay too fast.
Trying to get out is definitely still an issue. - I can see that, a few px nerf on the right spike should alleviate both of these I think.
Save 2
Yeah this was much less of an issue for me than the previous save.

Screen 10
Save 1
Racing against the TNT blocking your way in a narrow corridor, I like it. Gives me an Indiana Jones vs the boulder sort of feel.
Also about as hard as the previous save, much easier than the save before that.
Save 2
Good save blocker.
Haha, very clever. Just went up after hitting the trigger and thought “whats the point in me going left?” *looks at line for the fire* “ah.”
I feel like if you rushed this well, you could get the fire while it’s still going upwards instead of right.
First jump of the left path is a little tricky. Far from the worst thing in the world, but may get a little frustrating. - I think I'll make a tiny adjustment on this to give an extra frame or so of leeway on both parts.

Door
Yeah I can’t see a keyhole on this door, but still have to jump to open it. You can hit the top of the door at it opens too, just not the bottom. - Yeah sorry, I meant that I added one for a future version, not visible yet!

Screen 11
Nice re-use of this song. Can’t remember what stage I heard it in before now. Stage 4 I think? - Its the generic hub song, appears in 'safe zones', the world 4 hub, the world 10 oasis, the opening world 11 cave and this hub.
Make it clear what button to use to get out of the minigame. I just pressed backspace and hoped. (Also a reminder what the “misc” button might be for some I guess? X is probably it, but I don’t know if I’ve used it before.) - Good catch on this too, this was missed in my previous attempts to retrofit all the signs with dynamic keybind checks rather than hard set text.
Rin’s rampage – Not clear to use the mouse to aim in the text
Apparently Rin/Luka autosave but Miku/Gumi don’t? - Good catch on that, that's a bad inconsistency to have and one I hadn't thought about.
I’ll find out another time if these minigames are somehow related to their specials, would be pretty funny if the golf and ball ones somehow were.


Miku’s Missile Command
“regular shot (Z key). And reduce…” the “and” doesn’t need a new sentence. - I'm sure its a byproduct of changing individual lines until the flow is ruined.
Man, you really need attack ups for the early game. - Its a little rng-y but the main thing is its very important to not take early damage since otherwise the health drops will dilute your powerup acquisition.
Score/Time grows huge when you lose all hp (to meet the size of the center text I guess). - Yeah, ordering of text settings were off, woops.
Doesn’t autosave, reset and got put back in Rin’s Rampage. - Altering this and the end text.
First try got me 700 points off the special :(.
Took me a while to realise “AoE” meant the size of my shot too, for some reason I thought it meant the special cooldown.
Hahahahaha. Yeah attack speed is very important. Pretty sure it’s near impossible to die when you get max attack and can constantly shoot too. Pretty fun. - Yeah if you get fast powerups then there's sort of a mid-section where you can handle everything easy, it'll keep scaling though.
2nd try, 12,861, because I stopped.
Crap, bonus was 15k, not 10k. Welp, round I go again.
Got 10k then died. I’ll continue for now.

Luka’s Labyrinth
This is gonna take some getting used to, being center of the screen not center of the ball.
Crap, made it to top right first try in about 70 secs, maybe this won’t be so bad.
Oh there’s a crosshair in the middle of the screen, useful, but possible change it’s colour to make it more visible? - Makes sense, if you know its there its noticeable enough but it does blend in a bit until then.
Oh, this one autosaves as well, alright.
Considering how Luka bounces off walls, taking it slow seems much better than going fast.
67.58 seconds (only says 67 seconds at the end of the minigame), took me a few tries to get through safely but not very long overall.
Ah, star is just grabbed, I see. - This one I ended up being pretty generous with the timing on but I don't see a reason to change it.
Also good that this one said “Backspace to return to hub or R to retry”
Dying in Miku’s Missile Command just says “Press R to Continue”, then returns you to the last save (either in a minigame or the hub).

Didn’t mention it before but nice to hear Zircons album in the first two areas, good stuff.

Maybe when you press backspace to return to the hub, is it possible to be in the middle on top of the save? Or at the bottom of the screen. Takes a while to return if you just want to check the minigames quickly. - Yeah, this was supposed to be the case, think I messed it up at some point.

Gumi Golf
Ah, mulligan basically means reset. This is fine in the text, I just couldn’t remember it.
Hole: 1, Par: 8, Score: 10 (ok seems good so far), Total: 2 ???
Hole 2
Nice ding.
Crap, you go roll over the hole. - Yeah, I considered adding a sort of 'cup rattling' physics effect to make it more apparent that you were going too fast to enter the hole but that seemed like it'd just be unreliable.
Hole: 2, Par: 8, Score: 6, Total: 1
…for a moment I was going to say “Why is this another 1 added to my score?” then I realised I’m an idiot while typing this out.
Hole 3
Ok, can’t fly the ball over the water, had to try.
Oh, the top path is just sand, not a line through the middle, I feel dumb.
I’m amazed I was only 2 over par on that first try.
“Press skip to continue” Maybe better to say Press S here? You aren’t exactly skipping anything. - Yeah, another case where I missed using the keybind check. Right, I see how I missed this. It wasn't in code but actually put into the sprite itself.
Hole 5
Softlocked on the wooden pole. Mulligan required. (Video recorded to show exactly what happened)
This hole be broke. Ball (while slowly moving) tends to push a block out of alignment (literally shifts it back) then the ball gets softlocked. Video recorded to show. - Okay this was a horrible mess but it SHOULD work fine now. Atleast I was able to get it to bounce around inside the wheel loop for like 45 seconds straight with no weird behavior a few times in a row.
It’s just while the ball is rolling slowly, while moving at high speed it’s fine apparently.
Took me 16 strokes to finish. About 6 were spent on the first shot. - This has been a thorn in my side for a while, I thought I'd fixed it, guess we'll have to see again.
Hole 8
Slow moving ball+wooden block=Pushed over the grey solid to right next to the hole.
Shots taken: 5
End Total: +12, screenshot taken of Scores/Total if you want to use them for info.
Ah, so Par is what you need for the ability. A little confusing having score 75 (whereas in the game it just lists the individual holes score, not the overall) when your “score” (Total) is actually 12. - Yeah, it sort of makes sense from a golf perspective but does reek a little of inconssitency

Text
Is it possible to reduce the spaces between the lines? Then more lines at once before you have to “scroll” (your eyes) back to the top. Just makes it a bit easier to read. - This is something to go over. The cutscene thing was just a placeholder forever and just kind of stayed there, again I don't see this as a super important part of it but it would be something I would like to improve.

Boss
Well this is certainly looking different to the first version. You have been busy.
I’m going into this with Miku and Lukas specials, not Gumi/Rin.
Ah, and I see their colour is lit up at the bottom to represent that, nice.
Is there any way to choose who you start as for this?
*goes back, reads sign in front of boss* Skip button (maybe replace with S again?) gotcha.
Oh, the giant portraits (that shrink) don’t show up after the first time, ok. - Yeah, just supposed to give a little more info the first time around.
So apparently, running into a spike kills all 4 characters? Seems a little harsh but I guess it’s pretty hard to die to a spike in all 4 areas here.
Hahahahaha I love mikus ability, very nice.
Ok, this info is partly from when I took a quick look a while ago. In relation to the Portal Strength. Does it increase logarithmically? Because it seems nigh impossible to get its health under 4k and it increases incredibly slowly when it gets close to 9k. - Its an expontential function, but similar enough in concept I suppose.
Might have broken the dev tools a little too, couldn’t put on invincibility to check something, accidentally pressed page up, that turned it on, couldn’t turn it back off without F2. (…later after the F2 I checked and they worked properly again, alright then.)
Yeah ok, with god mode/teleport, I got the portal strength to 4913.04. Killing the crystals clearly lowers the rate the strength increases, but I don’t get why it goes logarithmically instead of linearly. - The idea is that I wanted the portal strength to roughly hit a range of 7500-9000 based on how quickly you do it, a linear scaling would make performance in phase 1 more substantial than desired.
Not sure about this idea, but give the player an option to return to the portal if they beat phase 1 and decide to keep the hp they got it stuck at originally? Not sure how simple this is.
I.e. player beats Phase 1 with 7500 strength, decides they want to try to get it lower, can’t seem to manage and want to try Phase 2 but realise they can’t without rebeating Phase 1 anyway. - This should exist, always appears for me anyway, did it not show for you in the second phase? Might be a reference broken somewhere.

Ok, now to figure out the individual parts.
Oh my god, the Luka special is the Next Stage sphere. - With the exception of Miku's (which to some extent of is a reference to everywhere) they're references to various well known avoidances associated with the particular character.

Bottom Left
Start seems a little hard, but the Miku special clears the top right/bottom right enemies out quickly.
Ok, not too bad without it, just have to take it a bit slower.
To re-emphasise the portal strength thing, it’s already had 3700 and I’ve just been able to kill the bottom left crystal (Probably the quickest one, debateable with top right.)
It’s nice you remove the spikes too after the crystal dies, and that bullets from the four rooms can’t get back to the middle room.
Are the kids still spawning while the kid spawner dies as well? (noted after the kid ships in top left) - So once a kid begins spawning it will continue spawning even if the spawner dies.
Uh…on my last attempt there was a kid spawner in the bottom right of this screen, but now there isn’t.

Top Left
Man, those kids are a real pain in the arse, Miku special cleared them out again but died in the process, didn’t see how much hp they have. - Specials do more than 1 damage to most things and depending on angle/speed (since Miku's special is rng360 + rng speed) they can hit more than once too and really wipe 'em out.
2 crystals dead, 5983 portal strength (I’ll stop mentioning this here).
For some reason I didn’t think I could get up on the right side of this room, I was wrong.
Due to the sprite of the spider it’s a little harder to shoot the crystal on the right side than the left. Not too bad when you figure it out, but took me a bit. - Its a metal octopus, damnit. Not a spider
Ok, correction, you lose like half the hitbox of the crystal. - This used to have a bit more overlap, I'm personally fine with the way it is now.
Also, the kid ships can shoot while they’re dying. They’re fine to kill without Miku again, just have to take it a bit slower to be safe. - Yeah they probably should stop firing when the death animation starts. Will fix that.
Fireballs keep falling in this room after the spider dies? - Yeah, think I'll change that. Existing ones will linger but the spawners will disappear
Should kids spawn at 3 hits instead of 4? (8 total, right?)
I guess it’s just the fireballs that don’t stop until you leave the room, another attack did.
Oh, they stopped this time. I don’t even know how I get these things.
Tiling errors along the bottom row?  - That tiling is procedurally generated, might have just come up with a combo that looks weird, I'll have to review.
I started shooting on the right, and finished him on the right. Normally I end on the left, are double hits possible? (Very difficult if so) - Yeah, I decided to leave it there but its quite hard to pull off.

Top right
There’s a block where there shouldn’t be above the right side platform? - The blocks are identical but apparently there is a weird tiling issue. The tile appears fine and symmetrical in gamemaker but once compiled it was hosed. Did some fooling with it (deleting/replacing) and its fine now... weird.
Yeah ok, block isn’t there above left side platform.
I think this room is ok, but I’m really not sure how to best deal with it yet honestly. I take too many hits. - Its definitely a dangerous one to rush. I always did it 2nd (since 3rd spawns the star shooting object in the middle) because it'd be easier to do quickly.
Oh, music loop may need a bit of improvement. Not as bad as World 10 but still slightly jarring mostly when you notice it.
I need to start with this one because I’m not good at it, but I want to start with the left to slow down the Strength, gaaah. - That's good, I wanted it to be a factor for people to figure out their preferred path through the escalating difficulty.

Bottom right
Cool, you remove the extra enemies, thanks for that.
I imagine some may take a bit of time to figure out the solution on this.
Wave 4 was slightly annoying at first until I got the pattern down, still feels quite slow to kill them but it’s probably about the same.
Also a bit easy to accidentally shoot a crystal if your spot is bad.
Good, Miku special doesn’t hit the crystals.
Wave 3…crap I missed where the grey orb went. - There's actually another way to identify the correct crystal at all times, but its not easy. (Two ways actually, but one is ludicrously minor)
Wave 5, you can basically stunlock one guy into never teleporting, is this intended? - Its something I was aware of and left in but I'm not really sure why. It makes the phase kind of trivial.
Bottom middle crystal is a little harder to hit, can do all the others from various platforms but this one you have to be right next to. Not sure if lowering slightly is good or not as it could mess with trying to shoot some enemies. - I'll look into adjusting it. Previously it was too easy to hit (top part was always hit shooting across the line of the lower platforms) and I probably overcompensated.

Phase 1 clear at 7317.17 strength.
In short, logarithmical health increase I’m not sure about.
Bottom left may be slightly too easy? But it does take a little bit of figuring out a route I guess. - I found it gets pretty messy if you save it, though I assume most people won't since it reduces the power gain so easily, though it makes the other sections harder.
Top left asymmetrical spider shot might be a slight pain to some people, but it’s alright and can make shooting from the other sides more interesting.
Bottom right crystal maybe needs lowering slightly? But this may also be a bad idea. Also is stun locking an enemy in wave 5 intended?
Top right…I’ll be honest I still wasn’t good at this, mostly because of the kid spam. It’s probably fine but my strat was effectively to tank it (also with Lukas shield) and hope to get through fast. - The respawn rate on the kids here is much slower than in the bottom left, and I always ensured the one shooting block level was dead before going up (sunbla actually ended up doing the same strategy, too).

Boss Part 2
I like how the spikes fill the floor, that’s cool. - That took reducing equations with derivatives to make work the way I wanted. Its been a while since I had to use calculus for anything.
Oh god, a bunch of kids spawned and that became a mess fast. - Definitely parts that can feel overwhelming quickly but are easy to figure out (hopefully!)
Also lasers?? - I liked the laser animation I made for this so I had to keep doing it.
Ok, touching the portal hurts you, got it. Not sure if this should be changed or not tbh. - You have to get reasonably close to the middle to take damage, I don't want it to be a huge source of risk but it doesn't feel right for people to go straight through it.
Name text shifts downwards when you die. - Stupid GM text formatting functions
Oh specials can only be used once here. Well that changes things.
Lasers seem a little hard to reach sometimes, can be too far away.
Uh…the music just decided to be much quieter than normal for some reason. Had to close/reopen the game to fix it. (Later, post kill, I was retrying to check some things, restarted just as I killed the boss, boss song muted itself, close/reopen to fix.) - Yeah didn't really consider that, it fades out and doesn't fix the fade unless you actually let it complete. If you do restart before the fade finishes that'd happen. Easy to fix though.
CRAP, after the electric attack (which alternates between a plus/cross shape and a square) I nearly first tried the rest. Died at 551.17. The platforms starting to move caught me off guard too. - So the middle section of the fight sunbla felt was too messy and as such, I tried to 'simplify' it a bit but for the most part that meant nerfs. Wonder if it might've ended up too easy given 4 hp. I don't want to get caught in the typical fangame trope where a final boss is brutally more difficult than anything before it but I don't want it too easy. I'll probably ask more about this later.

When the lightning appears through the floor/ceiling, for the attacks you can shoot, these are pretty reasonable as you’re spamming shoot already anyway. The part where the platforms start moving may catch people off guard repeatedly, and it can be a little tricky, but I think it’s fine.
Ok, for the lightning wall at the start, it felt a little difficult because I was jumping around trying to kill the kids, but you can avoid their lasers fine while inside the square and I get how it spawns now, attack is fine. - Yeah, this one seems a little crazy but its all about not overdoing your actions. Its easy to juggle a couple lasers inside a box if you're careful and as long as you don't make any wild actions - like going down two platforms to shoot a kid - it always spawns the lightning box in an easily reachable spot.
I’m glad touching the kids doesn’t kill you. - Yeah, they don't in phase 1 either but its probably not worth it to test that theory


Attack spawned from the walls, then ceiling, then walls. Attack sprayed out from the middle, barely passed me, killed the portal. Just Luka left alive. - Thats a quicker kill than I ever achieved.

GG




Credits
“Whatever” 6th or so line? Doesn’t have a full stop before it.
Oh my god, that delicious fruit line. - I doubt most people will appreciate a bad pun that much but that's their loss.
OH MY GOD THIS DEL FRUIT THING HAHAHAHAHAHA. - Wanted something amazing to really be memorable at the end, and sometimes the quickest path to amazing is amazingly stupid.

You have big plans Kurath. Many people do. But you’ve had the balls to pull it off. Well done.
Final Deaths: 6384
Final Time: 19:21:25

Music cuts off a little at the end of the credits, feel free to let it play out on the Thank You For Playing logo. - I'll just the timing a tiny bit.

No extra right now? - Boss thing is the only extra planned. Speedrun mode for postgame being the other option.
Collected stars, never mind.
Cool boss extra thing. Maybe I’ll try that out another time.

Map
Not sure how clear it is you can click on the white objects. - Added a note to the side for that.
Oh that teleports you, cool. - Only works postgame.
Or how clear it is you can highlight them either.
Ah, it says right click while you’re in the area, just not while in “somewhere beyond” got it.
Maybe a reminder that P closes the map, not esc, although players will learn fast (like I just did…)
Data says N/A for most things. Fake game. - Must be a savehacker.
Seeing your star count is nice.
Oh, there’s also a giant “Clear”, that’s quite satisfying tbh.

Flooded Steppes
“but have, in a twist of nature, recently begun a…” not sure if this is a better way to phrase it or not.
Oxymoronically. Well aren’t you good with big words. I had to google that. I don’t feel smart enough to know if this is the right word or not.
(Google gave examples of deafening silence or mournful optimist.) - Its also contingent on people knowing that steppes are generally indicated by low levels of precipitation and all that. Either way, I'm going to leave it because I can't imagine it matters.
“Though the rain is perpetual, lightning is never seen though reports…” to
“While the rain is perpetual, lightning is never seen though reports…” - Decided to reword this whole sentence.

Craggy Ascent
“an unnatural ability to reach great vertical heights” oh I see what you did here. You clever bugger you.
“rumors” This is correct for US English, so I’m just going to point this out as “rumours” to be pedantic :). - Appreciate the colour commentary

Soaring the spike skies
Very minor, “unflinchingly thwarting” cuts it close to going off the edge of the map. (I think the g at the end does go off slightly.) Could move thwarting to the next line, then “the power of their”, or just “power of their” to the last line. Not sure how this looks. - changed this around.

Checked titles, they all match between the map version and more info version.
Can still highlight text behind the more info map while the more info map is up, very minor thing, just noticeable on a couple of them.
“The fabled 2.5D” lol.
Can’t right click a new more info map while the other is still scrolling off, good.
“fearsome power which threatened to add depth to the world” oh no, not depth, anything but that! - I'm scared too.

Descent from Darkness
I’m not entirely sure about the line “so one will need to continue the avoidance.” Maybe this is just because I see the word avoidance as a genre so much at the moment. - This felt too forced (obviously it was forced) but I decided to just cut that segment.

The Acid Bog
“Parts of the region have been corrupted…attempt a foray into this region” maybe change second “into this region” for “here” or “into this area”, basically not “this region” twice in the same sentence. - Didn't notice that, changed it.
Also, description says “eastern side” picture shows a south corner (even though it’s on the east side of the map) DansGame. (Not actually important)

Breaking the Seals
2nd last line actually does go off the map. You have room to add another. - Not sure when I screwed that again but yeah.

The Deep Dive
3rd line, same issue. Still room. - Fixed
Rumor, Rumour, Pendanticism. - I will ruminate on the spelling of rumo(u)r

Caught me a little offguard that area 12 starts from the bottom, after “entering” from the top, but it IS the bottom of the castle so makes sense.

Spinning the Wheels
“The underwater castle even once revealed contains…”
“The underwater castle, even once revealed, contains…”
I think I feel off about this because of the use of even in the next sentence as well, which doesn’t need a comma. - Yeah probably needs some cleanup.

The Great Hall
“New powers lie waiting to be uncovered…are certainly the final source of it all.” Wait, was this one long sentence describing the new powers you get or the kid? I thought the former at the start then the latter for the end, and I’m not sure. - Some rewording here.