WORDS CANNOT DECRIBE
words cannot describe the amount of awesomness this game contains.
hell, this game doesnt even need a number rating.
i give this game a rating of "jesusfuckingmightythirifgidkymightof awesomenessfullofepicproportionsofohm ygodjesuswhattheuck!!!"
A little too dry.
The game was just fun enough to stick with until I beat it, but there's just nothing about this game that really sets it apart from other shooters I've seen. Everything in the aesthetics department is just... very bland, dull, and unmemorable. It does fit with the whole "early shooter" vibe, but far too much so. I note that you do make some concessions to modern shooting gamers to try to set this game apart from the pack, but... Well, let's run down the list.
Being able to buy, pick and choose which weapons you want to bring into battle is a great way to allow players to adjust how they play, but the way you implement the shops, it doesn't really work out. There is no reason to ever, at any point, buy anything but the highest-powered engine and armor available to you, and you present them as single incremental upgrades after every boss. There is also no need to wrack your brain deciding which mod to pick, especially once you reach World 4, where the omni-mods fall to the same tactic of "just get the latest one after every boss". That leaves you with your weapons...
It just feels like there's only a couple of weapons in the game that are really going to do you any good. Early weapons are made obsolete very quickly, and the gimmicky nature of later weapons, coupled with the fact that they're just so much more powerful than earlier ones and the fact that many of the gimmicks just aren't very useful (Here I refer to the pulse cannon that doesn't even shoot more than 1/3 of the screen's height) while others are far more useful (I'm looking right at the gun that pierces through any enemy), means that you'll probably pick a few "best" weapons when you hit the mid-to-late-game and never look back.
I'm also not sure that the meshing of old-school hitboxes with new-school bullet hell, life bar or no, was a particularly wise move, because with many types of bullet spreads, you're simply too large a target to squeeze between bullets, most of which are pretty damn fast to boot- and don't get me started on the dick moves you pull with enemies spawning either on top of you, or coming in from BEHIND with absolutely no warning other than the "where the hell did this guy come from" collision damage, far more than once in the game.
Overall... this game needs a greater sense of identity, or a serious tightening of the game mechanics and shop system, or better yet, both. I know that naming it SHMUP was meant to tie in to the acronym you gave the game, but right now, the game's name feels sadly much more like an indicator of its plain, generic nature than anything else.
I can't sleep thanks to you
This game is very addictive, i liked a lot the lvl system, it gives another play experience, the levels look cool, the ship is too big for the screen.
I love this game!
I love this game, I have played it for a few hours at a time, sporadically since you released it 2 days ago. But because I like the game THAT much and have invested this much time into, I have some critiques of this great game...
The start of the game is slow going. I mean that in the sense of upgrades and rewards. I got gems so sparingly in the first world and the first set of weapons didnt look like much of an upgrade, so I didnt upgrade my weapon at all in the first world. And parts other than weapons are nothing more than statistical improvements, they dont change the gameplay at all.
My second complaint is the lack of variety in weapons and upgrades. Weapons are the only things that change gameplay and add a small layer of strategy to the game. Your choice of increased attack or defense is a little more, but not enough. How about more specialized weapons? The pulse cannon is very interesting. This leaves a lot more room for improvement though. Add more to the strategy aspect. How about upgrades that do more than just stats? How about upgrades that increase one stat but sacrifice another? How about giving up that +8% increased attack for 1% life steal (notice I didnt say HP regen since that could be abused by leaving 1 mob on the screen). How about a slot that could be used as a shield or a weapon or boosters, or something of my choosing rather than being set on one thing?
My third complaint, which I expected... A lot of the weapons are useless compared to certain weapons, when used in the "right" way, are a complete gimmick. After I got pulse cannons and homing missles, I never used anything else. I either had 4 pulses on or 4 homing missles, depending on the type of level. This is very gimmicky and I feel forced into doing this because the other weapons suck and the difficulty of the 3rd and 4th worlds jumped so much.
Finally... how about something DIFFERENT. This is very vague. Yes. More than just holding down a key, moving around, and memorizing patterns. I see two very good options for this: Talent Tree and Skills. You could make these very detailed or not at all. You could have 2 or 3 skills (such as bombs, temporary shield, and a shock wave) and you could have a basic stats-only talent tree. Or you could go much more detailed than that, but I think the simple choices would be enough for this game and would add a needed freshness to the game.
In conclusion, the game is GREAT. But after playing it 8+ hours, I have some things that could make it even better. This is a very impresive game though, I cant wait to see a sequel and more games from you! In my opinion as a game developer, the best compliment someone can give is a detailed
I've fought plenty of black holes in my time
But never has one been such a bitch to kill. I was about to give up for a while on World 3, which is refreshing. The game presented a fun challenge almost throughout and I felt driven to play more right until the end. That said, there were one or two things that bothered me about the game.
Firstly, the challenge really felt like it declined in the last world. The invasion was surprisingly easy to push back with the piercing rifle. I tried it again with a different weapon, and the difficulty spike was remarkable. I feel that the game would have been more challenging at the end had the piercing rifle been nerfed.
That, however, leads me to the second problem: a lack of diversity in the shop. The levels were fine on this front, and the bosses were all very different and fun, but the shop items (barring one or two notable exceptions) were all practically identical and played the same way as one another. The guns all shot straight, the engines provided flat speed boosts, the shields had fixed health, and the mods all added to one of the three (or all three) stats. I think diversity adds a great deal of replayability and makes the game feel more organic. Some examples I can think of on how to improve diversity would be shields that can only take one hit but regenerate after a couple seconds, slow engines that provide a rechargable boost, mods that add to xp gain/money drops, and more guns that don't shoot straight. A melee weapon that adds to shields might also work, but seeing as you have a multi-slot system, that might not work here. (the currently only melee weapon was really only useful for destroying missiles and mines for me, which was unfortunate).
It felt to me that, with the low-priority level system (I played for a couple hours and got about a 30% increase to shields), the low weapon diversity, and the retro sound effects, you were trying to modernize old arcade shooters. If that was your goal, I think it worked in most respects, but outside of the (well designed) boss battles, it felt more old than new. It was a solid game, without a doubt, but I feel like it ultimately needs more invention to set it aside from the hundreds of other games in this genre.
Still, I wouldn't dare give such an impressively difficult (and fun) game any less than the 10 it deserves.