Some questions for those further in

[Kittah]

I'm a real big fan of shmups though its a genre I'm really bad in. I appreciate how this game sort of eases you in with gradual difficulty slopes until you're managing to take down Overlord on a somewhat regular basis. On Switch I've managed to unlock every ship (barely, each victory I was critical on health) and I still feel like playing, so a few questions:

- How does Hard mode stack on top of loops? Is there a reason to do both at once?

- Once you beat the game with Hard mode, is there any difference at all between Null and D-13?

- I still haven't managed to make it past floor six on loop 1. Do you need to find the special cart to unlock a new loop every time? I haven't seem to have found it past just the once.

- Also, any hint on backgrounds? I only have the one still.

[The Snopingasusual]

- Hard Mode Loop is like so much harder than Normal Mode Loop. You might need to at least do Hard Mode on Loop 7 for some reason I won't disclose.
- No
- No, once you unlock looping, you don't have to find the card anymore.
- I think most of the backgrounds are unlocked in the Trials.

[Nick]

- Hard Mode changes and loop changes are separate. So one of them is a binary (either it's Hard Mode or it's not), and the other scales from 0 to 13. Is there a reason to do both? Yes, some endgame content is locked behind defeating certain things that are locked behind certain loop numbers, also in Hard Mode.

- Is there any meaningful difference between Null and D-13 once you can freely select the difficulty? No. There is not. There's some minor cosmetic things, but they are functionally identical.

- Once you have successfully defeated Database once, and thus unlock looping, the glitchy room with the glitchy cart will never again appear on your savefile, because you've already unlocked the relevant feature. Instead, if you want to unlock the next loop, on the hub, you need to select from the list of run options, at the very bottom, what loop number you want. If it's set to OFF (no number, just OFF), the run will end at F6. Instead, if you set it to 0, once you defeat the F6 boss, you will go to Nowhere (that's F7) and face off against Database again. If you win, you unlock the next loop, even if you say you don't want to continue. (The unlocking of the loop happens on Database & Point Zero defeat.) Then, when you go to the hub, you'll notice you have L1 available. Do it again at L1, and you will unlock L2, and this continues until you play L13.

- Mostly by defeating the Trials.