The correlation to the theme was a bit weak.
Controls could definitely be tighter, drifting was definitely weird. Combat could be more fun if the enemies gave feedback that they were about to attack. And also give the player a dash they can use once in awhile, would have been a bit more engaging.
Don't underestimate sound as a feedback loop for your players!
Some general design tips;
- Scale the camera larger and increase your players field of view. Nothing is more frustrating than dying to a bullet you didn't have enough time to prepare for because you didn't see the enemy that shot the projectile
- Games are satisfying to play based off of feedback given to the player, you definitely have visual feedback down (which is impressive to say since the game is so simple in terms of graphic fidelity, you pulled this off really well) but you should focus on motion feedback (things like manipulating time during certain actions, camera shake, motion trails etc. ) and audio feedback. Humans have quite a few sensory sensitivities, see how many you can trigger (in a good way of course) while doing something you want to feel satisfying to the player
- One life is a cool concept to think about. It's really poor put into practice though. Lives in general are a poor way to add difficulty to a game. To make a game satisfyingly challenging avoid uses of artificially hiking the difficulty up i.e. lives. Lives can be used in a good way, but be very careful when designing around them.
- Add a quit button! First thing you need to do when making a main menu under a time crunch when players are going to be playing your game soon is make the start game button. Wrong! Always make a quit game button. While this isn't a terrible thing when making a game that's being played by tech savy people like devs, players will always be irritated by needing to hit alt+F4 or any other hacky way to close the game. It's so easy to forget to do so it's always a good thing to get done first.
I really hope to see some of your coming projects and see you grow in your programming skills! If you have any other projects you want feedback on or tips to help with, feel free to hit me up! I think you have lots of potential as a sprouting dev! Thanks for the submission!