So here is Mandolin (who made Pillow Fight) completing it in 5:00 without losing a single life:

As a side-note, X-11 “Gust Gunner” was made to emulate NES-era difficulty and aesthetic, meaning you will die A LOT, and consequently, you will blame it on the game.  Originally, I was going to have a stock of three lives to complete the game, otherwise you had to start from the beginning.  Some people called that “sadistic”, and I bowed and agreed… the game is in the EASY state it is now because I understand that there is a wide variety of types of gamers who will play a Ludum Dare submission, and not all of them want to be tantalized for their skill level at twitchy platformers.  Essentially, what I’m saying is that the game IS NOT hard, because you can never truly fail.  You have infinite lives, mid-level checkpoints, and a nerf’d boss.  The mechanics are different.  That is the point of the LD for me!  Innovation!  Every time somebody tells me that they died too much because of the “mechanics” not being tightened up enough, I slam my face against the wall.  The mechanics (with a few exceptions, namely, the boss bullet hell being too avoidable) are exactly what we intended them to be.  We spent most of our time fine-tuning the player’s controls.  It just takes time to get used to playing something you aren’t used to playing.  My supporting argument:  the video above.  Mandolin has not played this game as much as either of us have, but they managed to do something even we haven’t done yet:  a perfect run.  If a game is able to have a flawless run by someone who has only played the game for a couple of weeks, then it is not a difficult game.

Cheers!

-C