Pink Sweets: Ibara Sorekara



Pink Sweets: Ibara Sorekara (ピンクスゥイーツ ～鋳薔薇それから～, Pinku Suītsu: Ibara Sorekara, abbreviated: PS) is a bullet hell shoot-em-up developed by CAVE in 2006. In terms of story, this game is a sequel to Ibara.

Pink Sweets was later ported to the Xbox 360 in 2011, included in a double-pack with Muchi Muchi Pork!.

Controls
Pink Sweets is a 2-button game in normal play, with an 8 directional joystick for movement.


 * Not shooting will build up your Shield and charge your Rose Cracker. 142 frames after the last regular Shot from your ship, the Rose Cracker Gauge is fully charged.


 * A: 1) Fires your Shot & Rose Hips. However, pressing the button fast enough will raise the internal autofire rate; 2) In case your Rose Cracker Gauge is fully charged, you will additionally release a Rose Cracker.
 * B (press): Cycles through your Rose Hip Formations, if you have any collected on your current life. Cycling between: Forward, Wide, Back, Reverse & Turn in that order.
 * B (hold): Fires your Rose Hips only.
 * A+B (press): 1) Changes your speed; 2) The current charge of the Rose Cracker Gauge is cancelled.

In-Game HUD



1) Rose Cracker Gauge. When fully charged you'll be able to release a Rose Cracker

2) Speed meter. There are 4 different levels of speed

3) Internal auto-fire rate (#10, #12, #15, #20, #30)

Characters
Each character has 4 different sub-types to choose from. These types usually have slightly different attacks from Shot Level 1 onwards. Shot Level 0 is the same for each type. The types are decided by which button you press when you select a character: A, B, A+B, and Start.

The 4 types of each character and their Rapid Shot as well as their Wide Shot at Shot Level 3 are as follows.

Speed

There are four levels of speed you can switch to by pressing A+B anywhere in the game. In terms of speed, Meidi&Midi and Shasta are both faster than Kasumi and Lace. The speed values in the table below are measured by counting the frames it takes to cross the screen horizontally. Therefore, a high value corresponds to a slower speed and a low value to a faster speed.

Items
Rose Items

Rose Medals

Item Drop Order
Generally speaking, ground enemies drop Rose Items in a fixed appearance while airborne enemies drop regular items determined by the item drop order below. Moreover, a couple of ground enemies, e.g. the laser towers in stage 2 or the trains in stage 5 are also guaranteed to drop regular items.

As for airborne enemies, under normal circumstances, every eighth popcorn enemy destroyed will drop an item. Airborne enemies with more than 1 hp will always drop an item. These kills do not contribute to the popcorn enemy count.

When a popcorn enemy is destroyed in the deadzone, it will neither drop an item nor does it contribute to the kill count of 8 (it does, however, still contribute to the ZAN counter). On the other hand, airborne enemies with more than 1 hp will always drop an item, even in the deadzone or when they are off screen. In this case, if the spawned item happens to be a medal, it will immediately break your medal chain.

The items are determined according to a specific order, governed by the following table.


 * If you fulfil the conditions for a Special Power Up, it appears as the next Shot Power Up, Rapid Shot, or Wide Shot item. As a visual key, this item is blinking rapidly.
 * If you fulfil the conditions for a Search Rose Hip, it appears as the next Rose Hip item. As a visual key, this item is blinking rapidly.
 * If you fulfil the conditions for a 1 Up item, it appears before the next item drop. Succeeding this, the regular item drop order then continues. The 1 Up item will not replace a regular item.

Rank
There are two separate difficulty settings affecting the rank in Pink Sweets. Difficulty 1 determines the starting base rank as well as the minimum rank cap. After the player has started a run, the rank is then gradually increasing determined by difficulty 2, which is the per frame rank increase. Under normal circumstances the game always starts with a base rank 1,048,576 (100,000 in hex) higher than the minimum rank cap. Starting a game in Special Version always begins at minimum rank.

Notes:
 * Rank maxes out at 00,000,000 (000,000 in hex) regardless of the difficulty settings.
 * Starting rank for Score Attack mode is the same as on Normal.
 * Minimum rank cap for Extended mode is 11,010,048 (A80,000 in hex) on loop 1 and 8,257,536 (7E0,000 in hex) on loop 2 on default difficulty settings.

Both the overall rank and the per frame rank are influenced by certain actions of the player, e.g. firing your Shot or picking up an item. All of the actions that have an effect on rank are listed in the tables below. Even though, an increase in difficulty is actually measured by a decreasing rank counter, the numbers below are listed as if the rank counter would count up. This is simply to make things easier to follow.

Notes:
 * Simply pressing the A or B button has no effect on rank. It is only the action that counts.
 * Grazing enemy bullets has no effect on rank.
 * Absorbing enemy lasers with your Rose Cracker has no effect on rank.

Notes:
 * The per frame rank increase from activating Shot Special Power Up and Search Formation stays even after the player dies or unequips them.

Notes:
 * Dropping a medal has no effect on rank.

Scoring
WIP

Enemy point values

 * Main article: Pink Sweets: Ibara Sorekara/Enemy list

Video References
Video index for Pink Sweets