Hello,
I played your game and here is my feedback below in no particular order. Note that I didn't read anything related to the game apart from some info in the Devlog you posted last so as not to spoil the experience:
1- I was really loved the soundtrack in the main menu and I liked the UI it was really amazing. Well done. However, I was astonished to find a more upbeat music track during the missions rather than the sad one in the main menu. I am guessing the sad one is related to the overall story? Other than that, the music gives a false feel to your game; that this is a tragic game or some sort of a game that has a story to it. I suggest keeping the music consistent in both ingame and out of game.
2- I loved the way I can build my ship and I loved the graphics. It is minimalist but I like it. I like how I can choose the way my ship looks and that may affect my performance (a big ship means it will get hit easier and smaller ships are easier to maneuver with). I have been thinking about the possibility to make such a thing for a while, glad someone started a project with it
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3- I liked how destroying the ships or containers (these floating black boxes) shakes the screen. What I hated however is that firing my gun and getting hit has no effect at all. I can keep firing my gun and as if I am doing nothing. Getting hit feels the same. As if nothing happened. I'd suggest adding more spice to it. I am guessing you watched Vlambeer's The Art of Screen Shake video. Perhaps some of these ideas would apply to firing and getting hit.
4- I loved how hitting other ships has this feeling to actually destroying them with parts flying out and their structure change. I didn't like that when I get hit nothing happens similar to that? Why don't I lose parts? It broke my sense of consistency in the world.
5- I didn't like that the health bar is on the bottom right corner. I never look there. Honestly, I am too busy dodging and shooting that I don't notice it at all. I suggest if you want to add a HP bar, add it on top of my ship, or perhaps have my ship act like the bar itself. With color draining from it. Maybe even have it work out like Call of Duty or some other shooter where the screen goes darker the more you get hit.
6- For some reason I didn't feel enemies are interesting. They all feel... the same. They shoot bullets and I have to just dodge them up and down. There aren't any interesting enemies like the boss. I played the tutorial and a couple of missions but I felt that the time I was really challenged was in the boss fights. Other than that, it was a repetitive task of just alternating W and S while holding the mouse button.
7- That said, I felt that the damage the enemies do was really minimal that sometimes I didn't even bother to dodge, I just stood there taking the damage then refilled my HP again. Don't get me wrong, I liked that mechanic of filling up my HP. But I didn't like that the hits don't scare me. It was when enemies swarmed me that I started looking for ways to dodge and felt slight challenge.
8- The right mouse button weapon seems weak for what I felt it should do. My feeling is that the "Power" weapon. I am guessing however it isn't that in reality it just another weapon type I am using that uses up "mana". So it didn't give me the kick I was hoping for even when I upgraded it with all the points I had. That said, if I am not mistaken if I fire that weapon, as long as the white trails are on the screen they don't affect enemies. Which I kind of felt was misleading.
In other words, let's say I have an enemy right in front of me. If I fire, it hit him, but if I fire above him and slide down while the white trails are still there and the trails touch the enemy, it won't damage the enemy. In my opinion that felt misleading. If I fire a laser and the laser is still there on screen it should damage the enemy, otherwise it is better to have it disappear.
9- The controls were really cool and I had no problem with it. I used WASD + Mouse as a right handed guy. So there is no problem there (as I saw you mentioned it somewhere that it might cause problems). However what I didn't like is that I had to move between sections. Like kill X enemies, press "D" for a few seconds to go to the next wave. Why not just have the ship automatically move? You can give me the moments respite even when you control the flow of going to the next wave. You'd just give me the option to move freely but passing between waves is controlled by you.
10- I didn't like how the story suddenly appeared in the final tutorial. I thought this is just some shooting no story involved then all of a sudden some text appear and now there is a story. I think it would be better to have the story right there from the tutorial. This way it won't feel like there is this tutorial, now there is this story that started all of a sudden just to give you a reason to fight further.
11- The spaceship that I needed to protect was really weird. When I come across it, it throws me away. Not sure why it does that. Is that a bug or intended? Same thing when that square I had to protect got near me it would throw me away.
That said, I thought I needed to protect the ship so I kept try to get the ships to pay attention to me and the only way was to hit them a couple of times so I keep pumping into that ship and it throws me away, it was not a fun time. I ended up just leaving the ships hit the ship I am protecting and picking them one by one slowly which broke the realism.
Another thing is that ship that came to destroy the one I am protecting. I didn't like that it suddenly and out of nowhere appeared, hit the ship. I would have loved if it appeared and I was trying to fight it off and it outsmarted me somehow and got to the ship. That would have been better.
12- The ship giving me the square to protect. It broke the realism when it said hold on and don't move while we send you the square and it took around 3 seconds to pass the square; so the mobs waited that long? I wished it was like "here is the box" and they throw it away randomly and now I have to go pick it up fast.
All in all though, I loved the game. Honestly, I liked the music, the graphics, the UI, the atmosphere... it was really cool. I kept playing for a while after I finished the tutorial and the first levels. I think you have something really fun and good her and has potential (at least in my eyes). It just needs some polish and a few details ironed it. Perhaps that is because it is still a demo and testing. But I am guessing the final product will be 10 times better.
Hope that helps and good luck!
Developer
