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Hello there, I am glad you are still developing the game. I did played the last version on the week before where I believe at the milestone the bullet time and boss death effect was implemented. And here I am also played the newest version.

Good work and a few stuff I felt worth mentioning as I played.


Major

- The kill streak seems not slowed during the bullet time, ending up most likely you will lose it if you loot the buff.

Minor

- BGM is not looping in skill tree scene.

- Mouse hovering is mandatory to see the description of the upgrade. Would of call it a issue since the game control is dominated by keyboard/controller.


Perspective

- Often loots seems difficult to distinguish from enemy fleets and their bullets. I understand it would be a tough thing to work on but I do get confused and quite often make collisions when I thought I am picking up a loot.

- Bullet time seems to be a negative feature to me, the ratio was so high it is almost a sudden pause and recovering. I felt there is hardly any meaningful thing you can do during this window. 

Personal suggestion maybe you can try turn it into a ability with lower ratio, say holding [shift] makes everything goes slower, but it cost a gauge where you loot it from enemies.

- Phasing shot seems to be a very bad idea to me as you can almost never out fire your enemies right now especially against a boss ship, I found it incredibly hard to even land a shot while it being on during the boss fight.

- Boss fight seems long and repetitive to me. I assume speed multiplier was disabled during the fight as the gauge was hidden and I can't tell since no damage or hit point bar was there. I think the this can be a major issue of design as it kills the characteristic of your enemies. At the moment you enter the boss fight, all the resource become a fixed limit. No mobs->no loots. Single target->Default/shield shot. I have been only focusing on my fleet and the upcoming bullets, would hardly even look at the boss ship at all since I would stay away from it for high collision damage anyway, unless I really want to land some shield shot.

What I thought is maybe some spawn of mobs would help making it better so you still have the boss and bullet hell, but now we have more chaotic factors. Also player can still get buffs like the trident shot and the shadow fleet, in the meantime make stuffs like piercing and bouncing shot having their point and also you can regenerate them.

Hello! I appreciate you still being around.

As for your feedback, very useful, and I will try to answer each point as best as I can.

About the major and minor stuff, will fix them, maybe even by today.

As for the perspective,

  • First about Enemy/Enemy bullet visibility. This is probably the trickiest part here, and I am aware of this.
    • For the enemies themselves I think the sprite rework could fix this, I will try make them 'pop' more and be a bit more colorful.
    • For their bullets, maybe the trickiest part, I am unsure for now, but I am considering a remake on the enemy bullet sprites (maybe some pattern/ color overhaul) while also having some light effect to pop them out from the background (specially when planets are big on the screen).
  • Now for the 'Bullet Time'. I really appreciate your feedback here, as I maybe I got too used to it. While I do have some ideas I want to try, things like:
    • 'Bullet Time' is at its best (I think) when there are many enemies/bullets on screen, so maybe lowering its drop rate (maybe to 0) when there are not that many enemies.
    • I intend to add another 'void fissure' power up, and its not yet implemented mostly due to skill-issue™ on my part.
    • Also, a quick transition when the power up is activated as to not be so jarring.
      • If none of those make it feel good enough, I will definitely consider making it an active skill, that you can choose when to activate.
  • 'Phasing shot' was really one of those things that "worked a lot better in my mind". But I will give it another go. I am currently thinking of:
    • It would only affect Bouncing and Piercing lasers, and instead of "destroying" the player's bullet, it would only "consume" a bounce/piercing instance. 
      • That would not only make those lasers more useful I (hope) but also make more sense that the skill tree could give you more bounces/pierces with those lasers.

Finally, as for boss fights. It is a really trick point, I kinda cornered myself here and I think your feedback is on point. 

I am currently thinking of reasons as for why it became like that. Currently my leading theory is that the 'Relativity Break' (RB) skill has a damage difference which is too big from the ship laser, and that pretty much creates a situation where you either:

  • Got a lot of score during the run and single tap the boss with the 'RB' skill.
  • Did not get enough score and can't possibly kill the boss.

I think that for starters I need to rebalance those numbers, give the boss a health bar and then try to make it more interesting, and your feedback has some good ideas in this part.


Thank you for your feedback!