First things first: This is an excellent game.
For people who like 'Star Sled' and 'Rocket Bytes', this is just bliss.
In short, it combines the cruisieness from the former with the preciseness from the latter. I do agree that the production value is high, but all things considered, there are still some points that I consider not ideal and feel like odd omissions from a game design/UI/UX point of view:
- If you played the two games I just mentioned or similar ones, this game might feel rather easy. I don't really get the point of having the time and fuel challenge separated if their limit is so forgiving. I decided to set myself the challenge to only move on to the next level if I complete all three (speed, fuel and no extra lives) in one go, and that made it interesting again for me. But even then, there were only one or two instances where finishing it with only one live the first time did not also clear the time and fuel challenge requirements. Nonetheless, I think this would have been the better scoring system - getting 1 star, 2 stars or 3 start on a level depending on how many of the challenges you finish in one run. This would make it much more appealing for most people to come back to already completed levels.
- One would assume that having so many settings would help to make the game more challenging if need be. But for some reason there is neither a setting to increase gravity/physics (even though I seem to remember that the dev-blog once mentioned "Jupiter" gravity?), nor the option to set 'lives' to 1. This is super annoying, I hate when games show of having many options, but then don't let you actually set stuff the way you like. Trying to do everything with only one life always forced me to restart the level via the menu instead of just letting me set the option lives, that is already there, to one… Why?!
- There is a bug when starting the game which makes the level-select continuously scroll (until you press b, I found out later). Took me some time to be able to reproduce this consistently, but I think I figured it out now: When I press the throttle button several times in very quick succession on the start screen (as you often do when hovering in place) - doing that will lock that d-pad direction on the level select. Sounds trivial, but it happens to me like 1 out of 3 times...
- Contrary to most list scrolling with crank on playdate work, level select does not use the crank scroll speed but absolute positions to trigger skipping to the next level selection. That cases a small bug, where, if you dock or undock your crank on a level you want to start, it will jump to the next or previous level (because it will jump 180 degrees in the process). Also, letting go of the crank very close to one of these set "jump" points, will sometimes make it jump a level again (if your crank continued on its own because it is a bit loose, for example). I get that level selection with crank is not the highest priority for this game, but it is noticeable for a game that seems so polished in other places.
- It's not completely clear to me how much from this game is new and how much was taken from Grazy Gravity. I assume that pretty much all the coding was done from scratch, which no one wants to take away from you, but there is no point in coding something if there is no appealing idea, mechanics, and design. Therefore, I really don't like that it is nowhere mentioned in the description that this is 'heavily inspired by'/'based on'/'a spiritual successor of'/'made with permission of the creator of' or so, but without that suggests that this is a completely original IP.
Those were the points that annoy me a bit, but let me re-iterate that this is a great game overall that plays and feels great! The rest is just feedback for areas that could be improved from a UI/UX enthusiast's view point, but they don't bother me personally that much:
- Personally, I like the start screen where you continue from by hovering over 'start' or 'settings', but it seems like some people have issues figuring out how to progress from here. Maybe it is because you sail past those platforms on the start screen, where some would expect and in the actual game do indeed land on them instead. Some small text like "hover your ship over 'start' or 'settings' to continue..." would perhaps help some here (might even showing up delayed after 10 seconds, if you want to keep the screen clean for regular users).
- The keys look way too similar to be displayed that small, and distinguishing having or missing them by having them filled white or black. Not completely sure why they are displayed small instead of next to each other and only if they are collected or required (or at on black background for a more visible difference)…
- The level map is a cute idea, but a bit of a waste if it can only be seen on the pause screen, where bigger maps are cut off anyway. So the few times when I wanted to check if the gate on the other end of the map is now accessible with the new key, I couldn't anyway until I was almost there anyway. I get that the map was a bonus and afterthought, but considering that it seems like some effort went into it, it is a bit sad that it can't just be mapped to a button (no control scheme seems to use all buttons anyway) for full screen display and ideally scrolling.
- I don't really get the point of the heart power-ups if you can set the amount of lives to play with in the settings anyway… Except maybe for tricking me into thinking I maybe found something useful when playing a level the first time, which is kinda fun, I guess :D ).
- I mentioned that I feel like the limits for the challenges are too generous. I feel like almost all of them should be AT LEAST 1/5 faster times. But Stage 10 is definitely completely off… Time attack asks for 450, and I apparently finished it in 88 just by attempting the survivor challenge…
- I do feel there are A LOT of low-hanging fruits left unharvested content and replayability wise. I already mentioned using a three-start rating for finishing challenges in one go for additional challenge and replayability. The start video made me hope for a little more story telling engagement. I was a bit surprised that there was not at least some kind of text message or introduction text or other element related to that until the very end. Even if it would have been just some short sassy text by the instructor talking about some obstacles at the start of some levels or after some progress. Some more diverse challenges or some collectibles, that maybe needed collecting in a specific order, would maybe have added an objective that could not have been cleared at the same time as all others in one go – for very easily added playtime/content/replayability. As you can tell, I really enjoy the core mechanic, so I am just looking for excuses to spend more time with the game. :)
- Finally, I did not really get the 'mini-game' at the end. Why did I suddenly fly a completely different machine if I trained with the other? Why was it up to me to open the gate manually as a pilot? Why did it require such overly fast cranking? And then on the credits, I was steering my original ship again anyway, so it was not even some kind of proper reward/unlock…? (Was it supposed to be a reward for finishing the game with all achievements? I suppose there is no reward for that other than personal gratification?) I suppose I am overthinking it, and it was just to display how over-the-top, reckless and bothersome the company is, but I guess it didn't completely work for me.
So TLDR:
Wonderful game that plays really well, all things considered I think it is worth the asking price. I consider the fact that it makes me want more, a good thing. Some small design choices that leave room for discussion if they should not have been tweaked differently. Interested to see if there will ever be some kind of expansions, considering the basis is that solid. Otherwise, interested to see what the dev puts out next.