Am I the only one that feels that ZUN's works are growing more and more fanmade-ish as time progresses?
I know exactly what you mean and I completely agree. I don't know how to describe it though. Like, these patterns would not fit at all in Imperishable Night, but they would fit very well in Concealed the Conclusion or War of Fox and Badger.
So what you're saying that the danmaku isnt pretty anymore?
I'll try to make some sense of this. Well, for me, personally i find the danmaku in EoSD lacking. Not (necessarily) gameplay-wise, but rather the aesthetics are a pet peeve. Specifically, compare the sprite sheets from
EoSD, with
later games, just simply PCB who adds triangles and butterflies, or IN who adds stars (2 sizes) and amulets. We have even more than than, like arrows (the ones you use along a bow), music sheet symbols, glowing spheres, alpha channel (that one thanks to advances in software, but whatever). I see this problem with quite a share of fangames, though a lot of this is after being exposed to the high variety of bullets we have today (made by ZUN, or danmakufu ph3 making easier than ever to add new bullets and other visual effects, at least compared to 0.12m). LoLK seems to use an overabundance of red and blue bullets (mostly on stage portions, but bosses also suffer from this), and simple spheres and diamonds. However, maybe this is the most appropriate thing, with people being from the moon on a full-on invasion, wanting raw power instead of more intricate designs.
Also, is this game meant to represent what happens when people are exposed to the true moon? I mean every aspect, like the color of the HUD, the backgrounds, the spell card backgrounds, the music (wanting a more "techno"-like ambient rather than using "traditional" instruments), the particularly high density/speed of enemy attacks...