Wow, incredible work! Everything is super solid.
- I love the start menu, cool font, and background. Nice use of parallax!
- Awesome to give player choice of characters.
- Super low pixel style is working great.
- I love the stage variety, both visually and with gameplay changeups.
- It could be more eventful when the player gets hit, sometimes it's hard to notice. It might be better to have that ship explode the spawn the player back, like in Stinger. There are other mechanics from that game that could be swiped, like when you die, your ghost floats off screen but you can grab it to keep your upgrades.
- Would be nice to have a way to continue from your highest level, so players can complete the game and see everything. Then maybe you could unlock an option to play with limited continues or something.
- More powerup variety would be cool, like maybe a way to get more health, or also a way to choose or influence what powerup you want.