Running the Linux x64 version. Fullscreen mode doesn't seem to work right, it just unfullscreens itself when the menu shows up.
It feels good to play, but I'm no good at explaining why things feel good to play. So instead, here are the things I'm not happy with.
I don't understand what the half-circle powerups do.
Mashing the button to fire at the maximum rate is annoying. There's no reason I should have to do that in a game in 2015. In fact, I'm not sure there's ever a reason to NOT fire (except at the very beginning when you can only have a few shots on screen at a time), so I wonder if a fire button is even necessary.
I think you need to be more deliberate about contrast - make sure the enemies and their bullets, at least, stand out against the background. Otherwise, I can't really see them unless I'm looking right at them. In particular, purple on brown doesn't work so well.
You have enemies coming from all sides of the screen, and they move very fast (sometimes faster than the player's ship). Short of memorizing the level so you can anticipate them, there doesn't seem to be a reliable way to avoid them. Maybe I'm just not good enough, but it doesn't feel right to me to be killed by a collision out of nowhere. Perhaps an arrow at the screen edge indicating when enemies will spawn would alleviate this?
Thanks for the feedback. The fullscreen thing is a deliberate decision. I didn't want the game going fullscreen because that would either stretch out sprites or widen the player area and visibility. So if you select fullscreen it shrinks back to a window of the resolution that was chosen.
The half circle powerups let you speed up the ship using the toggle speed button. It would help to have some kind of "How to Play" section in game.
Auto fire never occurred to me but that's a pretty good idea. The player would lose precision but it's something they could use if they wanted as long as the auto fire rate wasn't inhumanly fast or something.
Thinking about getting the bullets to pulse a wider range of colors and faster to make them really stand out better.
Having warnings to indicate when things are coming from different parts of the screen is an interesting idea. It could make the game more playable and also open up some different encounter design.
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Running the Linux x64 version. Fullscreen mode doesn't seem to work right, it just unfullscreens itself when the menu shows up.
It feels good to play, but I'm no good at explaining why things feel good to play. So instead, here are the things I'm not happy with.
I don't understand what the half-circle powerups do.
Mashing the button to fire at the maximum rate is annoying. There's no reason I should have to do that in a game in 2015. In fact, I'm not sure there's ever a reason to NOT fire (except at the very beginning when you can only have a few shots on screen at a time), so I wonder if a fire button is even necessary.
I think you need to be more deliberate about contrast - make sure the enemies and their bullets, at least, stand out against the background. Otherwise, I can't really see them unless I'm looking right at them. In particular, purple on brown doesn't work so well.
You have enemies coming from all sides of the screen, and they move very fast (sometimes faster than the player's ship). Short of memorizing the level so you can anticipate them, there doesn't seem to be a reliable way to avoid them. Maybe I'm just not good enough, but it doesn't feel right to me to be killed by a collision out of nowhere. Perhaps an arrow at the screen edge indicating when enemies will spawn would alleviate this?
Thanks for the feedback. The fullscreen thing is a deliberate decision. I didn't want the game going fullscreen because that would either stretch out sprites or widen the player area and visibility. So if you select fullscreen it shrinks back to a window of the resolution that was chosen.
The half circle powerups let you speed up the ship using the toggle speed button. It would help to have some kind of "How to Play" section in game.
Auto fire never occurred to me but that's a pretty good idea. The player would lose precision but it's something they could use if they wanted as long as the auto fire rate wasn't inhumanly fast or something.
Thinking about getting the bullets to pulse a wider range of colors and faster to make them really stand out better.
Having warnings to indicate when things are coming from different parts of the screen is an interesting idea. It could make the game more playable and also open up some different encounter design.
Appreciate the response.