Well, I suppose it was an oversight to assume that displaying the controls during the tutorial would get everyone up to speed. If someone skips the tutorial and jumps straight into the game, they have no way of knowing the controls.
The pessimist in me might say, “If you skip the tutorial and don’t know the controls, whose fault is that?” The realist in me knows the answer: it’s mine. I thought displaying the controls again during the first level would be redundant, but clearly it wouldn’t be.
It only takes one key press to start flying again after a crash. Six seconds from crash to starting another attempt. My ideas for expanding the game involved giving the player additional abilities in a new set of levels, with a checkpoint at that transition so they wouldn’t have to restart from level one. The game currently has eight levels, and I agree that simply adding more without changing the gameplay loop wouldn’t be very engaging.
I don’t think I’ll expand it further, but I’m glad to receive feedback that can help me make a few final improvements before calling it finished.
Thank you for taking the time to give me your impressions.