Thoughts recorded during my playthrough
+ = I liked it
- = I didn't like it
* = Comment/neutral
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- The game starts immediately with no title screen. I didn't realize this until I heard my character start firing, and even then I was still getting oriented, so I died right away.
- The interface lies; it says you control the character with the mouse, but that does nothing for me; using the arrow keys actually works
+ FWIW, the arrow key movement is good. I can get to where I want to be without trouble. It doesn't feel too fast or too slow, and there are no acceleration/deceleration shenanigans. Maybe you should drop the mouse movement idea and just run with keyboard movement?
+ I like that the character fires automatically. No need to find a fire button to spam or hold down for the entirety of the playthrough!
+ Fun background music. I wish it looped better, but I like the style!
+ Enemies, obstacles, shots, and the main character are all presented clearly. I never had to guess where I was in relation to an obstacle.
- It's possible to fly out of the screen's boundaries to what is effectively a safe zone.
- There's a pattern somewhere in the middle of the level where enemies come from behind me and damage me if I don't run away from their spawn point. I didn't like this because there's little warning that it's about to happen, so I always take at least one point of damage from a cheap hit. This either needs to be telegraphed better or the enemies need to spawn away from the player so the only way the player will be damaged is if they deliberately run into the spawning enemies.
- The initial sound from the boss is extremely loud. I suspect there's an overlapping sound effect because the issue subsides shortly after the boss appears.
- It's not clear how much damage I'm taking. I glance at my health bar and it looks like there's plenty of health left, so I run into a bullet to try to get out of a bind but I end up dying.
+ I do like that I can take multiple hits generally.
- Full health bar doesn't look full; there's a little tip on the end that looks like it could be filled more.
- Sometimes the game crashes when I die during the boss battle.
- It's not clear if the health bar is accurately reporting my health. Sometimes I die when I thought I had a full health bar.
- I think the health bar needs to be put somewhere on the screen where it would be easier to glance at. Having it on the extreme right side away from the action makes it hard to see while trying to dodge the obstacles.
Summary
I like where this game is going. With a little more polish to the underlying interface and some tweaks here-and-there I think this could be expanded into a full multi-level game.