Very comfortable and pleasing to both eyes and ears; almost soothing experience, peculiar for a space shooter. Movement speed is pretty much there, which is usually a problem in games like this. To me, vertical aspect ratio brings a nice, old-school arcade feeling. Extra bonus for being the first game I've seen to have separate settings for sound and audio :)
Suggestions:
- I'm so used to WASD-controls, that it would be nice to have them supported in addition to arrow keys.
- In game over -screen, I'd expect "no" to bring me back to main menu and "yes" to restart immediately. Also, menu could save my previous selections (now they are always reset to "arcade" and "normal").
- I couldn't find any difference between story and arcade mode.
And tips:
- Add an enemy ship that blows into smaller pieces in Asteroids-style.
- This one is screaming for multiplayer mode (cooperative or against each other).
- Point counter would be nice incentive for continuous retries.
Looking forward to see the next version!