If you were one of the four people who played Touhou 1, this game is for you! This breakout-style game has you using your sword to guide a very dangerous orb through tiles for points. After a few screens, you will go up against a stage boss. The game does have lives, but they only serve to boost your score and you only suffer a score reset if you game over. On easy mode, the game can be cleared in about 20-25 minutes.

Some things I like:
-Akagi herself is very well animated (especially the sword swings) and is fun to jump around as. There are three sets of moves to experiment with in subsequent runs.
-Tiles are distinct and its easy to know what to expect once you've seen one in action. They are often introduced in less hectic environments before added to larger sets.
-The game is short but skippable cutscenes and make it good for quick speedruns.
-Collectable stars give you incentive to try stages again to do better.
-That spinning globe animation damn

Some things I don't:
-The game boots up in full screen mode which is kind of a pain with how it handles losing focus but it can be changed easy enough.
-I think there is a large gap between Akagi's animations and the bosses'. A lot of them don't look nearly as good in comparison.
- The entire game uses the same gradient background in different colors to represent each stage. The story dictates you're travelling the world and it is unfortunate to not see that reflected in the backgrounds. It does however make things very easy to see.
-The game asking you to quit after every stage gets very old very quickly. It really slows things down between stages.
-Bosses can be knocked away where they vanish for a few seconds. I get that its probably to stop Samurai from melting their HP but it completely stops the fight and has you wait to keep going and it really breaks up the pacing.

Overall it fills a niche that doesn't get enough attention and I think breakout adventure enthusiasts will find a lot to enjoy here if they don't mind some of the more simple aspects of its presentation. It's a very short game where most of your time will be spent in repetition to hone your skills and if that isn't up your ally then you might not think its worth the base price.

I played through the game once on normal and once on hard.

Cute game! Just like you!

I would like to thank this game for allowing me to continue my irrational acts of violence against spherical objects.

Update: I would to continue to thank this game for allowing me to continue my irrational acts of violence against spherical objects.

Update update: I would like to thank this game for the steam awards.

This is a game that is styled and built around the fundamentals of Touhou 1 - Highly Responsive to Prayers.

Which would be quite amazing, if it played as good.

While on paper, this game is superior to HRtP on a technical level (more angles to hit the target, more abilities to use) it becomes an issue of over complicating something that does not need to be complicated. Time and time again, people try to remake HRtP and fall down this same pit.

To start with some positives, the jumping and an extension; the jump slash is a very welcome addition to the base arsenal Reimu would have; it gives you more freedom with movement and potentially much better routes to go through the stages.


Now for the negatives.
The hitbox for the character in this game is exceptionally large, with bullets that move quite slow and reflect off of the screen. And because the sprite/hitbox of the character is very large, it makes the double jump ability that I talked about feel cramped, and barely useful.

Also; why remove the slide? The slide in HRtP is such a pivotal method to maintaining chains/having safety in your movement, allowing you to get a burst of speed while also shrinking your hitbox just a teensy bit further to make tighter dodges.

Scoring is even more barebones than HRtP, as there is no stage bonuses, no items to collect, just chain using bombs/charge slashes and try to maintain it. When are extends awarded? I don't know; there is no visual cue for this, and the only extend item I saw in my time playing the game was around stage *30*

Which brings me to my next issue, the game length. 48 stages. With no backgrounds or any real environments to stand out (walls are a great way to do this, hint.) this makes every stage blend together and never stay in your mind about what stage might be coming up, as they all look the same and are not numbered.

Bosses are also mostly a complete joke. I fought 4 of the 7 available bosses in the game; and played a few stages further in the game before closing it. Every boss I experienced can be cheesed with a combination of bouncing above the boss, and using a power bomb when a bullet approaches close to you. They are not engaging; nor are they very fun to execute.

To conclude, I do not think this game is worthy of being inspired from HRtP; and no way is this game "HRtP but better"

The engine work here is good. But the design around it is not.

Also, I saw the stage 1 reference in Stage 47. I was not happy.

pretty neat
i like the graffix and the dialogue
music has some midifunk
the website in the credits is hilarious
big sword go swoosh
touhou one but better

critique:
i hate the bombing system in touhou and am incredibly happy to find that i don't need assembly to remove it this time. the editable data.win is much appreciated
replace some of the stuff at line 17 of the collision with hurt in objPlayer with
if (lives || chargeAmmo)
{
if (chargeAmmo > 0)
chargeAmmo--
else
{
chargeAmmo = chargeAmmoMax
lives--
}
and leave everything else to get what is functionally autobomb. makes 1ccing not balls
@devs sorry i broke into the game i like it though

I like this game I just wish i was better at it

ball hard

Just as advertised: a solid, classic arcade-styled game; the sort that will kick your butt at first, but becomes very satisfying and replayable as you get better and learn to handle its unique and tricky mechanics with all three of the different selectable ability sets.
Jammin' soundtrack with simple but cute visuals and character designs as well.

good and unique combination between arkanoid, a platformer, and a sort of shmup. The game has a really good flow, especially on the bosses, when you get just the right angle to get past obstacles and keep bouncing the ball back and forth between the boss and yourself. Of the three classes I have only tried samurai and ninja so far, but they all sound fun. Ninja is my favorite as I am just playing for survival at this point and I like being able to consistently dash through projectiles. I like how the save system keeps track of how many credits you've used to clear the game.

the game feels pretty different between difficulties too, one boss used an attack on Hard mode that they never used on me on Normal mode.

the challenge modes are cool and seem to be purposed to teach the player about the intricacies of the combo system, which is something that I wish more flow-based action/score games like this would do. the way this game has done it, the player is given a lot more information.

the story and characters are cute and feel like a lighter version of Touhou. the dialogue seems different between difficulties; i don't know if this is a Touhou thing or if it is randomly decided on each encounter, but it is a nice touch that also helps with replay value. Graphics are fluid and the sprite work is good. I also like how each stage has a different tileset.

if I had one major nitpick I would say that I wish I could type on the high score screen instead of just selecting the characters, but I don't know if this would cause confusion depending on the input method you're using or whether it would be possible with a controller.

please get this game and help Anna find her dog!!

Demon Slayer Akagi is basically a homage to that weird first Touhou game everyone's forgotten about these days, which means it's part breakout clone where you can accidentally kill yourself with the ball, and part bullet hell boss battles. (Bosses definitely is the largest part of the two)

The game's kinda held back by its graphics (bosses' dialogue portraits look a lot more stylish than their in-game sprites, and having some pyramids and mountains and stuff in the level backgrounds would've done a LOT for immersion) but the gameplay is smooth and the bosses are high quality challenges, especially if you're going for a 1CC (clearing the game without using continues). Definitely recommending this (and totally not because I know the developer *whistles innocently*)

The coolest feature probably is that the story changes depending on difficulty, with Akagi getting more confident the higher difficulty you play at. More games should do this.