Major Update (Lenient Mode, Menus, Gameplay Changes & More)

After the initial demo version (which I will also call version 0.5 from now on),  while I was happy that people were playing my game and were liking it so far, I also realized that I'll need to make a number of changes & additions before working on the rest of the levels. So that's what I did in the last two weeks, and to be honest it had been very difficult & annoying to work on features like menus and a basic save system, things I did not expect to tackle to a significant extent on my first project. I didn't just work on these though, I also made changes to the gameplay from the movement to adjusting specific levels. 

I will go rest and recharge myself a bit, then I will start working on World 2, and it should be smooth sailing from here. While content-wise there are still only 20 levels out of 100, I'd say the project is overall over halfway done due to the "structure" now being established & the most difficulty things like learning menus being mostly behind me now. Designing new & more complex enemies as well as new gimmick mechanics might be a challenge, but other than that I don't expect many bumps on the ride from now on unlike the last two weeks.  Here is the full list of changes below:

• Added proper menus with options, including settings and an in-game pause button among other things.
• Added Lenient Mode, a lower-difficulty mode that makes the game more forgiving and gives you a lot more leeway to beating levels.
• Added save system. Currently it has no real uses besides saving settings.
• Adjusted Youmu's sprite to make the details & outlines pop out a little more.
• Added face expressions to Youmu, she will now make various different face expressions during gameplay, like when beating a level or killing an enemy.
• Adjusted movement. Youmu now decelerate faster when pressing a key opposite to where she's currently moving (For example, if you're speeding at the left and hold right, you will decelerate faster than in version 0.5). Acceleration and general "forward" speed are not affected. This makes gameplay a bit faster while also making recoil easier to manage.
• Buffed recoil a bit (not as high as the pre-nerfed state before the first nerf in 0.5) so that it's not trivialized by the adjusted movement.
• Adjusted Youmu's rotation when moving. Instead of her "angular velocity" being controlled by pressing movement keys, she now simply rotates based on current velocity, including from recoil. This makes her rotation more natural.
• Nerfed a few levels to make them a bit easier to beat, especially level 19.
• Made the cherry blossom particles (when you reach the goal) bigger and stand out more in general.
• The half-phantom holding the key now has an idle animation.
• Added an image to level 1 and 4 for control tutorials.
• Added a failsafe that kills Youmu in case she somehow clips out of bound.
• Several other changes that are minor and/or I forgot about.