The core gameplay is compelling and fun! Running around at high speed and shooting those piercing rounds was satisfying, the style of the game is on point too and I liked the music quite a bit. I'm not so happy about the choices given to you when you die, gambling can be fun the first few times but basing all of your progress on chance every time removes from the feeling of agency and participation. There was the choice of continuing with powers or with the gun instead but I didn't really understand how these affected the run, sorry. Also, the upgrades seem cool but there's just a small piece of feedback, I think it's hard to read what they do and also monsters attacking you at the same time makes it pretty hard to choose so I was just choosing at random.
Don't mean to discourage you or anything, I liked the game and overall I think it's pretty neat. I think it could use a better structure but run & gunning which is the main aspect of it is fun!
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Thanks for the thoughtful review! The idea behind the left choice on death is that you can bring over half of your power (all gun upgrades, or all passive upgrades) for the next attempt, but I found it difficult to communicate. Same goes for the shop stuff - balancing upgrades being interesting enough with keeping the pace up was a challenge, not something I was particularly happy with how it turned out. I'll be checking yours out in just a second :)
Hey, thanks for the reply! Right, now that you explained it it makes more sense and I can see how it can be interesting but also hard to communicate. Maybe something simpler and more immediate like "choose one upgrade to throw away" could've also worked. For upgrades I think that if they just had used a larger font and a shorter description as well as a simple icon to make them more memorable it could've been pretty good! But it's a game jam after all so I understand that it might have been hard to manage to add in time. Also, thanks for checking out my game in return!