Long time no see! It's been 11 years since the release of my first game, Jigoku Kisetsukan.
For a long time, I wanted to address some of its old shortcomings and ensure it runs well on modern hardware.
As often happens, once I started tinkering, I couldn't stop adding stuff, and it turned out to be a much larger update than I ever expected!
Main features
New chapter: The last character's route (TenSHI) has been completely overhauled! Explore a new chapter of the story with a character that now plays quite differently to unlock the new epilogue!
Gameplay: Characters and mechanics have been rebalanced.
Visuals: Added high-resolution artworks, new video settings and various visual improvements.
How to Play: Added a new section that explains the mechanics of the game.
Tools for translators: Modding the game to add new languages is now properly supported.
Behind the scenes: Discover a secret developer commentary section. (Hint: Dev's bomb might hold the key to accessing it...)
General optimization and polishing.
Character changes
Tenshi: Winter bullet damage increased by 500% (the blue snowflakes)
Mizuiro: Main bullet damage increased by 9%
Fumin: Slightly increased homing strength against bosses
TenSHI: Now a true glass cannon
Aura gain (bomb meter) doubled
Power is no longer capped, every stage after reaching MAX increases all damage by 3%
As before, she starts with 1 life and no continues, but life scrolls now increase her power level
Can you survive the edge between imminent death and overwhelming power?
Gameplay changes
Visible aura: Aura is now displayed when dropped by enemies and is automatically collected after a short delay.
Death penalty reduced: After losing a life, power-ups worth 0.5 will spawn (up from 0.35). Dying twice in a row is now less punishing if you manage to recover the scrolls.
Continues: Yellow scrolls dropped after a "Continue" now fill aura to 200% in addition to maxing your power.
Normalized movement: Diagonal movement speed now matches perpendicular movement speed. (~31% slower)
Deathbomb window adjusted: The time window you can use a bomb after being hit now depends entirely on difficulty. Before it also depended on how much aura you had (longer at 200%, shorter at 100%). The new averaged values are: Easy 0.5s, Normal 0.44s, Hard 0.38s, Hell 0.3s.
Visual improvements
Added high resolution artworks.
New fullscreen scaling options: Keep Aspect Ratio, Fill Screen.
Fixed sprite animations running too fast on monitors higher than 60Hz.
Messages displayed above the player when collecting scrolls or aura now queue up instead of overlapping if triggered simultaneously.
Increased menu transition speed.
Updated several particle effects.
More? MORE!
Implemented a new "How to Play" section that explains the game mechanics.
Implemented object pooling for better performance during high-density bullet patterns.
V-Sync can now be toggled in the Configuration section.
Pressing Alt+Enter to toggle fullscreen will no longer accidentally trigger menu selections.
Fixed an issue with text rendering in the end-of-level score sheet and boss positional arrow caused by sub-pixel rounding errors.
Fixed a bug where aura overflow points weren't awarded correctly.
"Cheat room" renamed to "Unlock room", it can be accessed via a different code in the main menu: unlockme.
Several localization improvements.
Rebalanced some boss encounters:
Fumin 4th phase: decreased boss health by 9%
Chronos 6th phase: slightly decreased number of blue bullets.
Zelus 5th phase: the gap in the bullet wall is wider and now follows a pattern instead of being random, reduced boss speed, adjusted timing and speed of bullets.
Zelus 6th phase: increased boss health by 10%.
Atych 4th phase: same as Zelus 5th phase.
TenSHI: now awards 35 aura after each phase like all other final bosses, instead of 25.
TenSHI: when characters switch places they spawn life/power scrolls.
TenSHI 6th phase: same as Chronos 6th phase.
TenSHI 7th phase: same as Zelus 5th phase.
Tools for translators
I've also added some tools to make it easier to add new custom languages to the game.
In Steam, right-click on the game and select "Manage > Browse Local Files", there you can find a how_to_translate.txt file in the languages folder, it explains how the process works.
In short:
Implemented dynamic language loading.
Implemented a section in the game to test in-game dialogues (accessible via CTRL+T anywhere in the main menu).
Added automatic text wrapping during dialogue, it's no longer necessary to manually insert line breaks when text is too long.
Added the full set of Japanese characters, and latin characters with diacritics.
If a translation is particularly well-made it can be added officially in the game!
Version 1.x Branch
Version 1.09 is still available to anyone interested in playing the old TenSHI or challenging their high scores from before the rebalancing.
In your Steam Library, right-click the game and select Properties > Game Versions & Betas. From there, you can select the old version.
Fanart Archive
Alongside version 2.0 of the game, I also made a page where I'm collecting fanart that people have made for the game over the years.
Receiving your fanart has always been one of my favorite things about having made this game. It's really special to see people interpret the characters in their own way, so I wanted to make a dedicated place where I could showcase and preserve all of it.
You can find the archive here, with all the drawings I've been able to find so far, along with their credits and sources.
If you've ever made fanart for Jigoku Kisetsukan and you'd like to share it, please do so in the Community Forum! I'd love to see it!
Special Thanks
I'm very grateful for the help and support I received from the following people:
Alexandre Dobrzynski for translating the new content in French.
Alexey "Ctrekoz" Pouzikov for translating the new content in Russian.
Fajacopo for reviewing the Italian dialogues.
Rikkukun for beta-testing the update.
I'm currently looking for an English -> Japanese translator for the new content. Get in touch if you can help!
This is all for now. If you spot any bugs, leave a comment here!
