This game was part of my third Indie Game Contest and for the first time ever the contest ended with 3 games being very closely tied for who should win. I am happy to say that in the end your game came out on top and received a donation!
As for the game itself, what a fun time killer. I have always enjoyed a good incremental game now and then and yours is probably one of the more enjoyable ones I have played. Initially I maxed out the skill tree and hit a wall on level 3. I was taking so much damage it was pretty much impossible to progress. At this point I had spent about 30 - 40 minutes with the game. Unfortunately for me I was in deep at this point and confident with strategical skill tree upgrades I could beat level 3. This kicked off a 2+ hour play session on stream where I talked about ideas and and gave feedback on the game. In the end I was able to beat level 3 and level 4 before hitting what I believe is a hard wall at level 5.
• The skill tree is a fun idea to keep the player playing the game. I liked how new skills would be revealed as you upgraded things in the tree. Kept me wondering just how far the upgrades could go if I just kept playing.
• The game is minimalistic in it's mechanics but the mechanics are all well done. Having the enemies also do damage to you is a great choice as it allows for more skills in the tree to offset this as well as giving the player a bit of strategy to their play. For example in later levels when enemies are doing more damage it is actually beneficial to NOT upgrade ricochet so the amount of balls you have out are not staying on the field causing you to take more damage.
• There is an odd bug going on behind the scenes where the game lags if you move the aiming line all the way to the left of the play field. Not sure what could be causing it because I am not a developer but on stream I guess it could be that some check is taking place to ensure the aiming line isn't going past the allowed point but spamming that check which causes the slowdown.
• I like the minimalistic take on the enemies because it gives you a lot of freedom and a bit of an easier time when it comes to adding new varied enemies.
• One thing I did mention on the stream is that it would be cool if the game had a sort of prestige system where after you begin to hit a wall you could reset your skill tree in order to receive a special currency that can be used to unlock permanent upgrades for future runs. This upgrades could be both stat upgrades but also unique modifiers to the experience. It might also be worth it to allow people to respec their skill tree for when they want to try a new strategy like I did.
• I know it is probably planned already but I do feel like some kind of background music would add to the experience as having the game be primarily silent could make it feel monotonous over time.
Thanks for all the hard work you are putting into the game, I look forward to seeing how it progresses. Lastly, congrats on winning the Indie Game Contest!