Difficulty options are planned and already prepared to be integrated. And I'm seriously playing with the idea of implementing a real beginner mode, as I'm constantly getting questions about the difficulty of the game. Many people really seem to be scared by shmups just by their looks, maybe because they instantly think of the hard-as-hell arcade games from the 80s/90s or japanese danmaku/bullet hell games. RFA should hopefully take a different route and offer good playability without being boring/unchallenging.