Tastrion - Hard Mode 1CC/ALL Clear (Alternate Paths, No 1-UP Pickups, No Solar Ultimus)

A horizontal 16:9 STG made in Shmup Creator channeling the spirit of Genesis STGs.
I already played this on stream and cleared it on second try when it only had Normal Mode and after some of us (aka me and Skalt, since nobody else cares) said the game's easy, Magna decided to add Hard Mode and two extra stages... and a super weapon that nullifies the difficulty even more for said mode, ugh.
Hard Mode isn't that much of a difficulty increase with how powerful the Desolazor is, you start with 7 lives and 2 bombs (4 is max), on top of a HP system with a maximum of 5 HP and there's way too many shield pickups that sometimes take 3 hits to take down, sometimes 1, it's really inconsistent on Hard Mode (not to mention overshield, that takes even more punishment to destroy or gets overwritten by a shield pickup, since they don't have any timeout for disappearing).
The other stuff added to Hard Mode are two alternate path stages, Power Downs and the super weapon Solar Ultimus, which you lose on death, but you only need to hold down the Photon Laser button (or in case of the backwards shots, tap it in a rhythm for more shots to come out faster), it's so busted that it breaks the scripting on certain bosses in half.
The game doesn't even have that much of a hardcore memorization, the Alternate Path A bosses were basically blind for me without the Solar Ultimus, most of the deaths were me being a dumbass and nothing else, so if I self-impose a handicap of no 1-UP pickups (score extends are every 100k, so you realistically get only 2) and can still beat the game with those dumb mistakes, then you know that the "game's too hard" or "oldschool bad, newschool (bullet hell/modern caravans) better" is extremely overblown. Playing bullet hells doesn't prepare you for oldschool STGs and playing only caravans, which are meant to be side modes and not the main game, doesn't prepare you for STGs in general and applying mentalities from those two on oldschool games will only backfire on you.
And before you ask "Don't you have around 80 minutes of playtime on Steam," the answer is really simple: Shmup Creator games on Steam have no DRM whatsoever (even the simple Steam one), so I played the game off-steam, the real playtime would be around 9-10 hours now, with all of the multiple runs and trying to find bugs.
Buy the game here:
store.steampow...
Buy the soundtrack here:
cybershroom.ba...

[@magnaremora]

Congratulations on the 1CC, Hope you had a good time despite the game still not being hard enough for you. I appreciate the time you dedicated for it! And don't worry, I'll take these criticism into account whenever I get around to work on my next project. I'll make sure to make it difficult, but not bullshit, it's a hard thing to balance since these things are ultimately subjective between players, but most importantly, I am trying to make the gameplay loop fun and not infuriating. Once again, thanks for playing my game :)

[@QuakedoomNukem]

It's a really well made game and I would very much recommend it to people to try out despite my complaints. Also, not sure if is visible to you or not, but I did another vid of bughunting, but made it private and added you to see it, try checking your email. If it's broken, I'll just unlist it and edit this comment.

[@magnaremora]

@@QuakedoomNukem I saw you posting it but I can't access it. Unlist it and I'll check it out ASAP! :)

[@QuakedoomNukem]

You should be able to see it now.

[@magnaremora]

@@QuakedoomNukem Cheers, I'll get right to work :)

[@jamesiewalters2360]

Well this was a sweet little8 interaction.