This is a pretty good game, there is a good amount of polish in some areas and I think there is a lot of potential here if you were to expand on it. I really liked the idea of exerting the stars/planets for stardust but possibly harming my run if I push them too far, etc. -- and there is a lot of juice. It's a good game, nice job!
Here are some notes I took while playing:
- I like the SFX and music, the UI feels a bit blocky and distant though (a lot of things pressed against a different edge of the screen), might like to see a little more cohesion there
- If you click too quickly, it definitely seems to become a bit of a flashing lights hazard, would add some kind of warning to your game or reduce the strobing/growing effect. I know you are not supposed to click the star a lot, but the first thing I did upon launching the game (before I understood it) was flood my screen with strobing yellow and red lights haha
- I really liked the gameplay loop and the balance was pretty good. It was a cool moment when I realized about the 'Expand Universe' upgrade, that was a cool moment. And moving to planet automation etc., it felt good.
- One big pain point is that scrolling the upgrades menu is excrutiatingly slow... I don't have one of those infinite scroll wheels, so it would take me like 15+ seconds just to get to the relevant upgrades, which is not great. This sticks out like a sore thumb because the rest of the game feels pretty good, you might even be able to classify this as a bug and fix it now honestly, because just having 5x faster scrolling would certainly enhance the gameplay experience without adding any "content" ya know?
- I reached a point where the upgrade tree wasn't expanding any more even though I'd seen quite a few black holes, I'm not sure if I just needed more DNA or what -- but if the upgrade tree did end up only having that couple handfuls of upgrades, I would really like to see more. Though I understand it's a jam game and I'd already spent probably 20 minutes at that point, so yeah it makes sense the content had to run out eventually hah.