I'm playing on Linux. I started from the terminal so I could see any errors. On startup there were several errors about failing to compile depended scripts, and being unable to load/open other scripts & resources. After pressing play and selecting a ship a lot more errors were shown. I'll save listing any specific ones for if they seem relevant to any issues I experience in game.
I want to give a warning that I can get into fine details. I'm spending a bit more time, and being a bit more detailed, with games I've been following on the Discord server. I offer my opinions and suggestions. Do with them what you will.
On the title screen, the music volume feels like it spans a wide range, from really quiet to loud enough I lowered my volume. When loud it can easily overwhelm the SFX for hovering a button, and I almost missed that it was there. Most people won't be spending a lot of time here, so it is probably not a big deal, but I had stopped to write out the notes about the startup bugs. I noticed, so I'm mentioning.
The Play button is big and obvious, but it barely reacts when you hover, especially compared to the 2 smaller buttons below it. From what I can see the hover effect makes it brighter, but the Play button is already brighter than the others, so the change is minimal. I had missed the change completely at first and had to look close to see there was an effect.
On the Select Ship screen it looks like the Tank is selected and showing its stats. When I mouse over the right half of the screen the Dart stats show up and there are some highlighting effects. The Tank stats stay showing. This looks to be because it is selected. I did not want to click on the Dart to test this, so switched to keyboard and confirmed. I'm not yet that far into the game, but am acknowledging the mouse may not be a favored input method, and this is probably why the menu Play button was already bright, as it was the selected option for keyboard/joypad. You do list keyboard/mouse combo controls, so considering mouse use on the UI is probably still good to do. I think the mouse hover effects might benefit from some review. Not vital now, but some polish for the future.
I clicked back on the game to regain focus, and ended up selecting a ship. At this point I realized that I'd probably do better with a joypad, and paused to connect one. When I went back to the game I clicked to ensure it had focus and noticed the mouse was not interacting with the game. I was able to press Start on the joypad to unpause and repause, and at that point the mouse was working on the pause screen again.
I am playing on a 4K screen, so maybe that is impacting things, but I feel like the intro text at the top is a bit small. This is still just at the start, and I can see having some text be small and out of the way of the main game can be good, but compared to the rest of the screen that feels undersized currently. The text with the controls feels similarly small compared to the vastness on the screen. I resized the window, and the text did not scale, so that lack of UI scale is probably the issue.
I moved it to a 1080p monitor and the text feels better sized, though the left side floating controls text is being cut off. For Pitch and Yaw, it cuts off between "th" in "Pitch". It is possible this is because it started in 4K and got moved to 1080p. For now I have it on the 4K screen, and have resized the window down to what I think will be a good size that should bring the top text closer to my primary field of view, while making sure everything is still visible.
I had switched to the joypad, thinking the game may have been designed for a joypad, maybe HOTAS. The controls on the screen only show for keyboard, so now I am thinking I was wrong on this. The controls for advancing the dialog especially were unknown and my first choice ended it, rather the advancing. I even restarted with the joypad plugged in, and used that to start the game, just to see if that affected what was shown. I have switched back to keyboard and mouse for now to follow along with the tutorial being shown.
The down arrow key to advance the tutorial dialog feels very out of the way. Considering that the dialog auto-advanced I didn't really use it beyond the initial bits. There were times where I was trying to read the top text and the new side controls that updated that the top text advanced a bit too quickly. When I redid the tutorial, the skipping didn't seem to be working to skip much.
I found the Inertial Damper step to be tough. I had to retry it several times before it detected and let me move on.
For the Utility and Heavy Abilities, I had missed the UI element showing them at the bottom right of the screen, so had no idea what I was doing when I first used them. I'll attribute that partly to the screen size, and the focus being on trying to read the dialog at the top and the controls to the left. It might be good to have the tutorial draw attention to the UI elements as they are relevant.
This is tough. Once you get through the gate it is just non-stop combat. I really didn't feel like I had a chance to get a feel for things. The tutorial was long and slow compared to the actual gameplay. I think you need a slower difficulty ramp so players can get used to putting the skills to use. That first area should probably have the spawn rate cut in half. It took a while before I was able to get enough of a break to see what the Black Market trader was, even though I saw it soon after entering. I largely just tried targeting whatever red thing I saw in my view and shooting while moving around in largely the same area. When I tried to get behind cover, it was always too far and I just get more enemies to deal with.
I also had an issue with Boost and Barrel-Rolls. Sometimes they worked and sometimes they did not. I was at full energy and still could not get Boost to work. I'm not sure what the issue was. Maybe there is something in game that I missed that prevents their use, beyond energy. It was problematic and made me less willing to even try Barrel Rolls. I restarted the game and they seemed to be more reliable then for a while, but still I never was fully trusting they'd work. That restart was also my last play. Perhaps it is an issue that happens over time, or something that happened while playing and affected the inputs after that.
It would be nice if the Defeat screen included some kind of score so you can compare runs. It seems like the pause and other screens, such as Defeat, hide some of the UI elements, such as currency and time, so just leaving those would be a start.
I replayed a few times and got a bit of a feel for the game. I managed to find the gate a couple times and start the charging. I also reached the Black Market and Turret Fabricator. This is not really my style of game, at least not these days, so I struggled with keeping up with the pace of the game. Still, I really think it would benefit from a slower difficulty curve to introduce players. Maybe even add a training/practice area. No tutorial popups, just an area with the basic elements of the game to learn how they work. Maybe different sections, so you go to one area and it spawns harmless drones for target practice. Another could spawn enemies that shoot back, but with a limit so that only 2 or 3 spawn in a batch, and no more spawn until those are gone and a cooldown has expired. Maybe use your logic from the tutorial so you have to go there and shoot to activate the spawn. After all are destroyed there could be a countdown and if you are still shooting after it, then it spawns more. Let the player have some currency and maybe see how some shops or other elements work. I think there is a good base here. Maybe as it progresses I'll get a better feel for it and be able to finish an area.