So, I like the concept of this game, but I just kept dying too much before I could warp back to the station. I played this in the browser.
As the dev, it will be obvious to you how to play this correctly. But for someone who has never played it and/or the casual player, I think it needs a gentler ramp up so that folks can at least get back to the station at least once. This will hook folk into the game more easily, instead of feeling like a struggle to get to even a first opportunity for a ship upgrade. The mechanic for jumping back to the station is too awkward: would be better to just hit a key and have some kind of dimensional jump animation instead of press and hold. It is already necessary to wait for the jump thing to fill up, so the press-and-hold mechanic feels like overkill.
Also, when flying along, there is a no explanation for the UI elements at the top of the screen. I suggest adding some tooltips or a help screen that explains what things mean. Maybe do this with a transition screen when going from the station to a level? With an option to "never show again".
When I got further into the level, the basic weapon did not keep up the same firing rate as at the beginning of the level. I could not see any reason for this - is it a bug? This also contributed to the dying...
The UI is generally very good, but there are a few points that might benefit the game:
- The intro is very long. I get why it is like this, but maybe try to cut it down a little bit. Also, I was not sure how long it was at first, so I tried the scroll wheel on my mouse, and this dismissed the intro text before I finished reading it. It might be better to have an OK button or some such in the bottom right corner, so that the intro text only goes away when the player deliberately clicks the button. Especially as there is no way to retrieve it other than starting again.
- In the station, add a settings cog somewhere, to access the main settings screen.
- In the list of ship parts, you could include the cost of each item on the buttons. Initially I thought the numbers (1000, 2000, etc) on some of the names were the costs of the parts.
- Probably best to reduce the number of your dragon logos on the main menu and other main UI screens. Just one instance of the logo in one of the corners would be much more classy. And I also suggest sticking to one version of the logo, in terms of colour choice.
- Also, in the main menu screen etc, your studio name should be small compared to the name of the game. I would use separate Labels for this.
- In the Settings screen, make a gap between the game name and the tab names - they look like they are crashing into each other at the moment.
- In the main menu, you could make it more dynamic by having the same scrolling star field background scrolling behind the buttons and labels. Instead of the current static background, that is.
- You have an e missing from Kenney in the Credits screen.
- On your itch page, you have your studio name as the banner, instead of something relating to the game. I would replace this. At the moment, when playing the game in the browser, it looks like part of the game, so that you have your studio name twice in some places, particularly the UI screens.
Feel free to ignore any of this feedback. It is, after all, your game.
Edit: Just skimmed the devlogs, and I see you already had some feedback about the jump mechanic. The info box is not clear enough, and just putting a thin red circle around the icon is not obvious enough. The circle just looks like part of the UI. As noted above, better to have a transition screen that is the whole screen, and has an explanation for everything on the top status bar instead of just one item.