Neat game, I think as a minimalist bullet hell it’s rly good but as a nodelike it leaves more to be desired, it feels so frustrating how you don’t pick everything up on death, and needing to choose between “either focus on getting gold or kill enemies for gears” feels unintuitive and unsatisfying compared to other nodelikes I’ve played before (like in astro prospector, sure you can choose per run what you focus on, but you’ll still make *progress *on both resources, and I feel that’s missing here)
And further this game doesn’t have much… Identity? Which in itself could be an identity, but idk It just feels like “more astro prospector except with a core game that isnt as fun” since without the nodelike elements I wouldn’t really enjoy the core arena shooting that much? The enemies spawn in too quickly, without end, and also without any satisfying curve in difficulty, level 3 starts with a lot of enemies and the amount of bullets on screen never really… Changes much from there? Since they spawn only slightly slower then you can deal with them +the boss is there too
And the “shooting the walls for gold thing” is also a bit unsatisfying, since in a bullet hell it’s really hard to move close to something, and here you need to do that in order to pick it up! Even though you already have the reward, it’s right there on the ground, you properly shot it out! But then no, you don’t get it And that just felt unsatisfying, and like if this was just a single room arena shooter with a high score chasing loop, it wouldn’t be that fun to go for these walls, and I think that’s a shame
All in all a very good demo, the bullet hell elements are very polished which I love (the little glow before enemies shoot, the bullets being readable, the spawning and your own shots feeling nice), but the nodelike loop and the core gameplay I think could use some more work before I’d consider playing a full version (as is there were a handful of moments where I would’ve stopped playing, if I wasn’t so intrigued by the polish of the pure bullet hell side of things, it’s simple, but I do really appreciate it)