Bullet Hell Artistry #4 - Hiro's Autocatalysis of Unrecognizable Katzenjammer

* By the judges' consensus, this entry will not be judged, as the gameplay strays too much from a regular script/game. This text is simply a description of my impressions of the game. *

- If there were a reward for the most effort put into an entry, AoUK would take it. I'm surprised by the amount of new art, music, and assets made for the game. I see some notable names behind the music as well. I think this entry has the most patterns compared to all scripts in general. The same goes for the number of characters. Props for taking your time to make everything.

- Visually, the game has a lot going for it as well. I do like the general presentation, including the HUD, backgrounds, etc. The portraits are for the most part okay, though most of them suffer from the Same Face Syndrome:tm:. 

- When it comes to patterns... it's hit or miss. After playing most of them, I have the impression that you have to cheese patterns with either the back shot or the omikuji dice to capture them (unreliably, that is). There are plenty of patterns that rely on visual distractions, (4-3, 4-1, Sanae's tornado) convoluted gimmicks (3-2, 3-3), or are just ridiculously difficult (6-3, 5-1). It's what makes judging every pattern by itself so difficult; you HAVE to abuse the system in some type of way to capture the spells. While the card system is creative, the fact that several of them carry some sort of drawback can make them useless (Sanae's tornado makes the screen shake vigorously, the omikuji dice can make enemies invincible 33% of the time). I wish it were more like ISC, where you can do all patterns with no items but still get a considerable challenge trying to do so. While the creativity behind most patterns is admirable, there are instances where the execution makes the game annoying to play. Consider re-balancing the cards so they give you a boost, but not one so big you need to put an additional handicap. The patterns themselves are considerably more difficult than most of what we've seen in Touhou, as the difficulty is very high from the get-go. Since you're required to capture all patterns in one "day", you have to put up with some very nasty cards like 2-4, 3-2, 4-1, and 4-3 to unlock more content. 

- Overall, it's admirable that you were able to do most of this in such a short period, but please consider playtesting your patterns thoroughly and providing a fairer challenge to players. Balancing aside, I believe the game has a lot of potential.