This is unbelievable! I was planning to sit down and rate some other jammer's games but I got sucked into playing your game for an hour. I have a lot of thoughts so I'll just rant them all out.
1. About the shield enemies, I shared the same frustrations as a lot of other people at first about not being able to kill them. I think in general, people don't give the benefit of the doubt enough to jam games and assume anything that seems off is a bug, so I kept playing and eventually realized that the shield comes out of the back panel and can be deactivated by shooting them in the back. Not only was that an "aha" moment I didn't expect at all from playing a shooter, but it opened up the floor for new strategies of dealing with enemies. I'd learned up until that point that it's probably best to spec into regen and draw enemies fire away from the thing you have to defend, but that wouldn't work with them as they'd face me.
2. As far as the gunplay goes, first off I love that there's diagetic gun elements--the glow decreasing on the secondary rifle and the light bulbs on the beam rifle are so cool, and the color swap for v2 of each gun is a nice touch. I wish they felt a little more powerful, though. I love that each of the three guns have a different niche, which is why I wish the swapping was a little faster.
3. The roguelite elements had solid implementation, like the shop having a decent pool of random upgrades on top of the four basic, persistent ones. Unfortunately, I just didn't feel like they were varied enough to warrant different synergies or "builds," it was more of a stat buff thing, but I still think it's worthwhile and adds some variation and strategy. I will say though, that unless there's something I'm missing, I don't know why the player would ever want to buff their stats mid-game, as opposed to waiting until the end so they can be permanent upgrades.
4. The vibes are just awesome, having the disembodied voice narrate the game state is a classic, and the environment having the structure from the intro cutscene in the center is really cool. Also, having the red version for the game over screen really cemented the feeling of having lost.
5. I'm not sure if there's a win state and I'm just buns or if it's infinite, but either way the difficulty ramp and my ability to improve at the game both felt pretty natural.
6. To be honest, I'm not sure how well the game complies to the theme. I think having a circular map was a good idea, and the nature of a roguelite game structure is pretty loopy, but otherwise I don't really see it.
I had a great time figuring out your game and improving how long I could last! I can't believe a team of only two people could make a shooter with this level of concept, execution, and polish in like, four days. Thank you for submitting!
