itch.io

First off, I love the UX on your website (mercstudios.com). It's clean, focused, and easy to navigate. If you ever move Star Talon's UI in that same direction, I think it'd feel really polished. The sound effects are crisp too, and the sung intro and instructions are a genuinely nice touch, though the pacing feels slightly too slow.

A few things I think would meaningfully improve the experience:

1. Reduce the upfront reading.

The amount of text to get through early on is overwhelming. I'd lean much harder on showing rather than telling, and break learning into a bite-sized tutorial that explains one thing at a time. For example: an asteroid enters the screen, a brief red overlay pulse fires with a simple "Danger" label. Teach mechanics in the moment they become relevant, and do it visually rather than in a wall of text beforehand.

2. Give me a reason (and the info) to pick a ship.

Right now it's hard to know which ship or variant to bring. I can see Speed and Health differ, but I don't have a sense of which situations call for which. Don't different missions want different ships? It would help to have some light "mission intel" before I launch, even a small hint about what to expect, so choosing a ship feels like planning for the mission rather than guessing.

3. Make "Play" easy to find.

I was a bit lost for the first couple of minutes just trying to start. I'd put "Play" front and center as one of the first options in the menu so new players can jump straight in.

4. The movement doesn't feel natural.

Click-to-position movement feels a bit off to me. I think having the ship follow my mouse directly, or adding up/down/left/right keybindings, would feel a lot more natural and responsive.

None of this takes away from what you've built. The foundation feels great, and these are the kinds of tweaks that would make it click faster for new players.

On my end, I'm actually releasing a 0.2 version of my own game next week that addresses a lot of the feedback you gave me, so I know firsthand how valuable this kind of back-and-forth is. If you end up putting out another build, I'd genuinely love to come back and give you more detailed impressions. Happy to keep trading notes both ways as we each iterate.

Thanks for making it!