Sorry, I didn’t see your comment until now. Thank you very much!
Dialogue was definitely tricky. I settled on a combination of liberal use of threads and drawing text to background instead of trying to use the built-in dialogue boxes. I still feel like I could make it even more seamless, but I’ll keep trying!
I wasn’t planning on a lot of extra weapons. Star Fox 64 was more my inspiration here, where a lot of the gameplay is about perfecting being able to take down all the enemies with relatively straightforward shooting as opposed to a litany of power-ups. That said, I am entertaining a “charged shot,” but I haven’t decided how I’d want that to work or how it could change/improve gameplay yet.