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(+1)

That was a really solid package all around. Good art, good controls, good music, great gameplay.

I love the mechanic you went with for the power ups, where you have to accumulate a few in order to buy the higher end boosts. This adds an element of risk vs reward that I thought was nice.

There are a few things I think could have improved the experience:

1. The fact that dying resets your power ups to 0 means that dying late in the level is very, very punishing.

2. Related to this, I wish you could occasionally get power ups during the boss. Dying to the boss means you would have to plink at it with the basic shot for a very long time. (This happened to me, and dying after shooting at the boss for a good 30 seconds I'm pretty sure was a very frustrating experience.)

3. I was surprised to find you can only upgrade up power ups up to twice, and ended up losing a late game chance to upgrade my speed. I think displaying the powers up with, for example (  ) (  ) -> (  ) (O) -> (O) (O), would go a long way into making it clear how much you can upgrade.

Also, while playing on Firefox, at times (especially when there were a lot of enemies and shots on screen), everything except my ship and the environment would become invisible. I did not encounter this glitch after switching to Chrome.

The title could have used a little more thought, I think. ;P

Still, over all, great game! I love how you handled power-ups here, aside from losing everything on death.

(+1)

Thank you for your extensive reply. This is really helpful. And thanks for all the kind words! 

1. I know... I am from the prehistoric game era when games made you play for two hours, and when you made a crucial mistake, it was game over. Start all over... Since this game was inspired by those old games, I wanted it to feel a bit like that. 

2. But giving power ups during the boss fight would be a good idea. Now it feels unfair sometimes.

3. Also very helpful. The thing is, sometimes as the programmer you forget that certain elements aren't obvious at all. Your suggestion makes sense.

4. I didn't know about the Firefox glitch. I don't know how to improve that, but I can provide downloadables for win / mac / linux.

5. Yeah, after I posted it, I realised the title was pretty dumb. It was my working title I suppose and never thought of a decent name. The third day was my son's birthday, and I couldn't spend more time on the game, so I decided to leave it.

Again, thanks very much!

For point 1, an alternative, if you want to go hardcore, is to simply give one life. If losing the first life is going to leave the player up the creek without a paddle and basically doomed to fail, it can be more merciful to simply not give them the worthless extra chances.

Yeah I guess that's right. Although I completed the game once without any upgrades. But I admit I must have played the game at least a hundred times...