My opinion on the controls and the gameplay broadly flip-flopped between “restrictive, challenging but engaging” to “uncontrollable and emotionally taxing” and drifted toward the latter as the game continued. The first level was quite good in terms of difficulty. The second level I got stuck on for maybe 10 or 15 minutes at least. The ship was so floaty it drove me mad! And it was an unfortunate and cruel bit of design for the tooltip for firing missiles to appear in an area where doing so will immediately kill you. In the third level, the light upgrade was simply too slow and tedious to get that I ended up ignoring it after a few attempts. I’m not sure how you’re supposed to beat the final level other than Leeroy Jenkins-ing directly to the goal. Overall the thing felt like a luck-based affair unless I was making terribly small, slow moves.
The use of lighting and shadow was inspired. I found myself immediately liking the presentation. But the game was also rather stroby in a way I found distracting, especially when making several minor adjustments with the thrusters. The lighting effect itself was rather splotchy and low fidelity, but that only minorly affected readability with this game’s sleek, minimalist aesthetic.
Otherwise, well done on the jam!