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Thanks for playing!

One of the games that I was taking inspiration from for the incremental mechanics, Astro Prospector, had shorter time based runs, and I thought trying to combine that with the extraction elements would make for a unique approach to blending the two genres. Plus it meant you weren't crazy committed to sitting down and playing, if you started a run. I tried to trim the mechanics that I felt were pretty punishing from other extraction shooters out, to make it easier to design, and a little more "friendly" to new players, though its not like this game had a steep learning curve. Regardless, the idea of mixing the genres was a little bit out there, but I wanted to try something a little whacky this time around.

And I'm glad you enjoyed the boss fight! I wanted something to work towards with the upgrade tree, since I felt there wouldn't be much incentive to really play past the first 5 minutes otherwise, so though a boss fight doesn't really suit an extraction game for the most part, I still wanted to try to get it in. At that point, my goal was to include something that would incorporate the rest of the mechanics of the gameplay loop, to help prevent the fight from feeling like it was tacked on at the last minute and kinda forgotten about (though with the balancing, it may still come off like that, but that's on my end from tweaking numbers too harshly), so incorporating the time and charging mechanics was a given. After that I decided to try another new idea with the bullet hell mechanics, and leaning into that, I wanted to give some leeway to both myself as the fight designer, and you all as the players, by using the time as health for the fight, and having it replenish. Helps to cover up some of the "rough around the edges" design choices, and can let the player be more aggressive since there's no actual form of health recovery outside of the boss fight.

But thanks for taking the time to play all the way through, and letting us know what did and didn't work!