Hey! I tried the demo, and after playing just enough to get my first 1-life no-bomb clear, the game already feels super fun and addictive! It really makes me want to keep grinding runs :)
The Arcade mode is extremely well-paced, with interesting patterns and perfectly balanced difficulty. This is top-tier shmup design! The visuals are gorgeous, and I’ve rarely seen pre-rendered high-resolution graphics look this good. Performance-wise, no issues at all on my RTX 3060 12GB. (I disable Vsync though, otherwise I get a bit of input lag.) Bullets are perfectly visible, no unfair deaths. Excellent.
A quick note on the hitbox: when I first tried the game yesterday, I had trouble locating the hitbox without focusing directly on the ship. Looking where I was shooting, I instinctively felt like I was positioned higher, at the laser’s firing point. It took me about an hour before I could accurately place myself on screen without constantly looking at the ship. I don’t think this will be an issue for experienced shmup players though, and in any case the game really makes you want to push harder ;)
The music fits the game perfectly—energetic, driving. And I love how subtle the SFX are: you really just hear what matters, like enemies blowing up. Spot on!
The campaign mode is also interesting—great for learning the game and figuring out the patterns. Really original too, very few shmups have experimented with this kind of gameplay (maybe Bullet Hell Monday to some extent, but still quite different). Very cool, but clearly it’s the Arcade mode that makes me want to grind :)
I’d been following the project on the Shmup-STG dev Discord, so I’m really glad I got the chance to test it. Huge congrats for bringing the project this far already, and best of luck with the rest of the development! I’ll definitely be following closely!