itch.io

Seems like a very cool game, the ship building mechanics seem tight and the microscopic presentation is neat. Did you take inspiration from Spore? 

I made a little bot that can move around in any direction, which took some trial and error since it's not obvious which way the thrusters fire from the sprite. I wandered around the map for a long time, as it took me forever to find out I was supposed to go into the tunnel thing at the center of the map. I found a pink chest but had no clue what to do with it, then I died to enemies since I had no way to defend myself.

Trying again with the same setup, are the maps procgen? This looks different. The same thing happened, I don't understand what I'm supposed to be doing.

I've now discovered you can scroll in the shop, oops. I made a ship with a cannon, which was working until I stopped to pick up some parts. I don't know what I did, but I got permanently stuck without enough energy to use the welder, so I had to restart. It would be nice if you could see how much energy you have numerically instead of just a bar, that way you know if you'll be soft-locking yourself or not if you saw stuff off.

It's really cool that you can deflect projectiles with the cannon. I finally made it to the second stage, got my shit wrecked. Game crashed shortly afterwards with an error message saying "bongbing". Wait, it didn't crash, but I'm stuck in a black void.

This happened again after playing some more.

It's a very brutal game, which I like. It got fun after the initial hurdles induced by a lack of tutorialization. Honestly, one of my favorite demos I've played from the DDs I've participated in. Well done, looking forward to more.

It's unfortunate to see a dev stray into the pits of project hopping, but at least this is (supposedly) related to Ferarum. Writing down my thoughts as I play.

UI feels comfy, clunky in all the right ways. The photos are nice, I like the comet picture the most. 

The documents are neat, I like how you mess with the UI layout and stuff.

I see the 'rarum tie-ins in the games section. I don't like hurting girls so the Vivi minigame did nothing for me.  The 8-bit Gymnopédie No. 1 rendition in the Frankie game is nice, stayed on that for a while to just listen to it.  Not surprised to see Jojo talk being unavailable, there's another game for that.

I have two hearts on my desktop after going through all directories once. I'm sure there's more to see but my attempts at finding more stuff were to no avail. I've always been terrible with this genre of "game" where you have to discover stuff through trial and error, so I'll just leave it to someone else. 

It was enjoyable and well-made, keep it up bro.

Writing down my thoughts as I play.

Dropped some frames upon loading into the game and looking/moving around. Not a fan of the easing you have on the player camera, it's not the end of the world but I would much prefer snappier controls. It feels weird jumping while moving forward and looking down: you can't look straight down, so your character starts strafing if you look to the sides. It's hard to describe but feels wrong. Weirdly enough you can't seem to do this on the boat, your character just keeps moving in its original velocity. The boat controls are not the best but they do the job (I expect you to streamline them down the road). 

More frame drops when I picked up and first shot the revolver. The revolver feels  weak with its spread and low damage, no point in using it over the machete for now. 

I almost got the boat stuck at the second checkpoint, with the wooden gate. It is very easy to get stuck on the rim of your ship, which is annoying when jumping onto an island. 

The revolver has more relevance with the crabs and ranged guys, especially the former. The rifle is better against the ranged enemies but not the crabs. I dislike how the bullets in this game are so slow, makes the guns feel floaty and low-impact. The monkey enemies are completely irrelevant, I just ignored them and it worked.

Experienced a glitch on the island after the capsized ship where enemies disappear after walking past a certain spot, then reappear if I walk back. 

Died twice on the spiked parkour part, once due to me catching on the edge of a rock and being unable to move. Movement feels very, very clunky. 

The Blunderbuss is terrible, it was faster to use the akimbo revolves on the horde of shamans and ranged guys on the final island. The final boss was very easy.

It's a start, I suppose. Nothing felt particularly fun or captivating, as both combat and sea traversal were clunky and lacked juice. It's lame to have a game centered around a boat then have all the combat be on land, what's the point of the boat then? The level is completely linear which kills any feeling of exploration, something pretty critical to games about sailing the sea. I think you should take a step back and figure out your game's core identity before you go any further. Like Brim mentioned, the artstyle is all over the place, but this is a prototype so I won't dock any points for it.

Thank you for playing. I will make the tits bigger to increase depth.

Thanks for playing! 

honestly, changing the weapon with the mouse wheel would feel more intuitive than pressing R

I hate scroll wheel for weapon switch so it'll never be default, but you can always rebind your keys.

also, shift is more common for dashing compared to the spacebar

Means you wouldn't be able to mix while dashing, you can't hold CTRL and press shift simultaneously.

fire damage seems very punitive, especially considering how easy it is to press the wrong magic in the heat of the moment and further hurt yourself rather than heal

True, I should make the other damage types more punitive to compensate.

Thanks for playing!

The options menu scrolls with the scroll bar automatically downwards. Hard to see options because of that when changing the default resolution. 

I'm not sure I follow.

I don't see why I have to press control to select something that could be a movement key when the number keys already exist

Because it's difficult for people with smaller hands to stretch their finger to the 6 key. Might not be a problem for you and I, but the default setup allows people to keep their hand in one place and minimizes uncomfortable stretches. You're always free to change it, as you've done yourself.

Since moving my finger down there gets tiresome every time I want to switch, and this game is about switching on the fly. I had to change it and having it as Q with the rest being the number keys is so much better. It really should be the default with how much better it is to use once changing it around. 

I can try it, but CTRL feels comfortable for me.

Tutorial needs respawn checkpoints. Also a way to skip the tutorial when accidently killing yourself, which falls in line with checkpoints for the tutorial. 

I can make the tutorial automatically restart when you die, but no checkpoints. 

Maybe showing visually that you are in the mixing menu outside after selecting something would be a nice touch too.

The mixing text changes color slightly, but sure. Have any ideas?

 It is a fun game. I don't have anything else to add about bugs I could, since the other post talked about it already. The only major thing is the default controls is just awful. Once I changed it, I had a much better time overall. I think with some polishing, this will be very good.

I'm glad you had some fun with it.

Thanks for playing! I always look forward to your feedback.

The minimap should show the direction to the exit after you've found it.

Sure, why not.

A "full map" button that only shows the rooms you've been in would be nice, that way the player can more easily make sure they've cleared the whole floor before going to the next one.

The new map menu achieves this: it shows the entire dungeon, highlighting completed rooms in green. You can open it with M, I can see how you'd miss that if you didn't go through the tutorial again. 

The miniboss dies weirdly while frozen, the dying animation slows to a crawl and the audio cue doesn't play properly. Maybe frost should defused it like the mine enemies.

I'll take a look at it.

Also I would make it so the last floor's ending portal is always behind a miniboss so that players have a final challenge to look forward too. It's a bit anti climactic to enter the last floor and find the exit after 3 rooms.

Boss rooms should be in the next update. You'll have to defeat a boss, then the portal appears afterwards.

The new UI layout is nice but you've removed the "press C to open upgrade menu" text so players won't know that exists unless it's in the tutorial.

It's in the tutorial. On that note, I am in the process of moving the weapon upgrades menu to a dedicated workbench rather than a keybind: a lot of people forget to press C, and it's just too overpowered to be able to change your build anywhere and anytime.

Taking your eyes off the character and your enemies is still dodgy to do in combat. I'd prefer if the chem stock UI was, like, 3 times as big and transparent, but don't do that because it would look ugly.

The alchemy slowdown is supposed to alleviate this a bit since it gives you time to look down, but I agree to an extent. There's not much else I can do to address this issue without compromising the UI, it's just an inherent part of the game.

Thanks for playing and for the fanart!

What's new:

• New dungeon generation algorithm, now using pre-authored room layouts.
• Refactored elemental affinities—more enemy variants as a result.
• Brief time slowdown upon using alchemy, not available in hard mode.
• New in-run UI layout.
• Map menu, accessed by pressing M.
• New Shopkeeper animations.

Press backspace to enable cheats: comma adds money, period skips the current stage. Proper devlog coming sometime in the future.

I think it's fine if Electric is weak to corrosion, but like with all Elements it should probably be explained/showcased somewhere.

Maybe I could add more elemental dummies to the tutorial, maybe split them into more rooms. The manual does tell you the weaknesses of each enemy but I don't think anyone's really reading that.

I ment the snipping Animation of your Shopkeeper.

Oh, the portal opening one? It does have a particle effect, but I can see about adding more.

Hallways currently serve no purpose anyway, so if you generate more interesting Roomshapes then just Squares, and just connect them with as short as possible Halls for connection Purposes, you might circumvent the entire Problem

I've considered that before, the hallways incur a lot of downtime. I'll try it out.

Potentiall skew Element variation in Favor of the Enemy, so some Enemies have a higher Chance of being of a specific Element, or no Element at all, maybe some Enemies that have fixed Elements, that then act according to that Element. 

I understand what you mean now, making the enemies get dynamic elements rather than fixed variants. That's a good idea for variety, though I'd still have to manually make textures for each possible combination.

 Levels looping back on themselves with you passing by a locked Door to the Exit initially, and having to traverse the whole Thing to get the Key.

Could work, but it's definitely on the backburner.

Heyo, thanks for playing and for the extensive feedback! Hope you had some fun at least.

Controller isn't registered.

I have no plans for controller support at the moment.

Camera panning feels a bit to abrupt to me.

In what way? Like in the transition from spawning to giving the player control?

Why is me falling into the Pit in the Tutorial returning me to the main Screen?

It's kinda funny.

Second Time going through the Tutorial caused a few massive Freezes right when clearing the Path with Fire.

Are you on Linux by any chance?

No Idea whats effective against Purple Enemies, nothing seems to do bonus Damage

There is no set weakness for electric enemies so they fall back on the base faction weakness, so the purple robots are weak to corrosion. I'm well aware this is poorly explained, I'm thinking of just making electric enemies weak to ice or something even if it doesn't make much sense intuitively.

wasting Time standing still to change Alchemickals doesn't feel very good, why isn't this just tab to clear and 1-6 for chemicals or something, but bound to movekeys?

This is how the game used to be. Using 1-6 for mixing makes it hard to reach the bottom row of elements without either uncomfortably stretching your hand or taking your fingers off WASD, whereas QWEASD lets you keep your hand in the same spot. I've since added a brief slowdown effect when you enter mixing mode to my experimental build, it seems to alleviate the issue of standing still.

The Snipping animation is nice, but use some Particles I think.

I'm not sure what animation you're referring to. Did you mean the gun spin in the main menu?

You can freezelock Minibosses making their Fight trivial

Awesome that you found that out. It's a miniboss in the first part of the game, I think it's fine to let smarter players bully it with relative ease.

Diagonal Hallways look horrid.

Would you prefer all hallways to be rectangular? Alternatively, I could try making slanted walls for diagonal halls so they're less aliased.

Level Generation on a more Macro Scale is too simple, I found myself very often backtracking to get the last remaining Room or find the Portal because I went in the wrong Direction initially. You could use more Loopbacks on other Rooms, more interesting Room Designs, more Props to make Rooms or Floors feel unique

I've since added a map that you can use to better pick what path you'll go down, should help with some of the backtracking. I agree, though, the map generation is quite simple. I plan to add more base room shapes.

Player attack Animations could feel better, mostly melee tho, and you only have 2 Enemy Types, suiciders and floating Balls shooting Lasers, you could use a lot more.

Indeed, I have a lot more enemies to add. I plan to do another pass on the player animations when I less pressing things to add.

Or at least in some Instances, you could and probably still should seperate Elements from Enemies overall.

You mean having enemies that don't have a specific elemental association, or that can use multiple elements? I've been thinking about the former, it's gonna be a bit hard to design unique enemies if they all share the same weaknesses. 

Early on [props] are great as Cover, but that becomes less useful later on I feel, and you could do much more with it, creating Damage or Healing Zones for yourself or Enemies

I could add some more interactive props, I suppose. I could always have more barrels of different types, but that's a bit boring.

Thanks for playing!

it's hard to mix elements in the middle of a battle but that could just be part of the challenge.

It's intentionally hard, yes, but I will see what I can do about further streamlining it.

Also, i'm retarded and forgor about weapon ugrades

I don't blame you, they are tucked away in a side menu so it's easy to overlook them. I am going to change the way this works so they're more noticeable.

the shopkeeper killed me on my first run.

You did that to yourself...

Thanks again for playing!

Thank you for playing!

Lots of UI issues: I cannot escape from the settings menu, both buttons on the bottom right do nothing. The character information menu you access with CTRL is super finnicky, it sometimes doesn't open. The character customization screen worked without any issue.

The character controller isn't bad per se but it does feel clunky. First of all: feet sliding, might want to look into root motion. You seem to be moving the character away from their "center" as indicated by the circular shadow on the ground, which looks weird and makes the camera not feel centered properly. Other than that, I like the character's hovering ability, reminds me of the Artificer from RoR2.

Your shadows are pitch black, which make some areas look off.

I think I broke something when I picked up the Luger, I keep hearing a reload sound. Also, this happened upon pausing the game: it looks like the character gets rotated to whatever direction the camera is pointing in at the time of pausing.

The hazard suit guys did not attack me, they kind of stayed in place while periodically swinging their batons. I fought the big hazard guy, which did at least try to kill me, but when he died the room shrunk back to its normal size and I was left outside of it.

There were a lot of invisible walls that prevented vertical movement, and I eventually fell through the world. I put out all the fires and didn't see what else to do, so I stopped playing there. It's a crying shame to see this game in this state, there clearly was a lot of love put into the character/equipment assets and it shows. I don't want to sound rude, but maybe you could find more success in a team where you can focus squarely on art? Either way, I'll make sure to check this game out again in the future.

Quite a few grammatical issues in the dialogue, such as not capitalizing I's and first letter of each sentence, incorrect word choice (e.g. "corrupted" politician instead of "corrupt"), etc. I suggest running your dialogue through a spellchecker. I feel like there is too much dialogue for some parts: for example, having the player character narrate that they're learning to jump and crouch in the tutorial is entirely redundant.  

The loading screen was stuck at 50% for a while and was overall lengthy, and I had a huge performance drop after it finished. Spent uncomfortably long trying to find a way outside, maybe I'm stupid but I feel like it should be a little more obvious.  

Pressing F to speak with the nurse repeatedly restarts the dialogue, even if I'm in the middle of it. I just beat the guard up instead of finding the vents.

I think the spritework for the world characters is fine, but the VN drawings a bit poor. I would either lower the resolution to make them match the world sprites more, or keep the resolution and increase the level of detail.

Can't say that I enjoyed this game unfortunately, maybe it's just not for me.

Thanks for playing!

 it feels like only the single mixes are worth it

That's to be expected considering how the enemy roster solely consists of trash mobs for now. Hopefully, future enemies will require more complex strategizing!

It also would be nice to have a reminder that you can upgrade your weapons- my best run I accidentally had enough to buy 5 at once.

I wholeheartedly agree, even I forget to upgrade my stuff sometimes. I'm thinking of adding a workshop bench somewhere in the dungeon—maybe on the shop island—where you can upgrade stuff.

Are you going to add bosses? It feels a little cheap that the goal is only to find the floor portal.

Yes, there will be a boss every three floors.

And the shopkeeper needs to get mad if you hit her.

I will not let you down.

Some scattered thoughts as I played the game:

• The main menu UI is simple but has a nice aesthetic, just give the buttons some more flair and it'll be great.
• Character camera seems rather sensitive right off the bat.
• Movement feels smooth, combat does not. I get that this is probably some Mixamo animation you threw in just for the sake of it, but please don't freeze the player in place when you actually implement combat.
• Couldn't find a way to get back to the main menu, had to ALT+F4.
• Conversely to the character camera, the editor camera is not sensitive enough. I should be able to get at least one full spin of the character with a single stroke.
• My only functional complaint with the editor is that the coloring widgets should use HSV as the default as it's much more intuitive for the user. 

The customization options are limited right now but I can see you easily expanding them, it was pretty fun making a character. I tried making Jojo from Ferarum.

Keep it up, I'll check in next time.

Thank you for playing!

And make them jiggle when you shoot water at them.

I wanted to make them jiggle when you hit them period, which would eventually cause her to get mad, but I didn't have the time...

Just a heads up, Windows flagged your file as a virus. Had to go into Windows Defender to bypass your game.

Took me a second to understand what was happening in the tutorial, but it was clear how the game worked after that. The art is super charming, I love how the map gets covered in splotches over time (including the ones from you dying). It's weird how the game doesn't tell you how many lines you get per stage, it's not a problem per se but it wouldn't hurt to give that information to the player. 

I got through most of the puzzles with relative ease, but the one with the button that you need to pry open took me an embarrassing amount of time to get. I can't help but feel like I cheesed the HL2-sewer-puzzle-but-it's-a-ruler room, as I just stacked vertical lines without actually doing the puzzle. 

All in all a very nice game, if you could port this to mobile you'd make bank but I can see it being difficult given the controls.

Tried my first run using the default skills and without reading anything in the settings menu. It was jarring just being dropped into the game like that without any instruction, it took me a second of scrambling to figure out how to move, shoot, and switch character. I reached the first boss but died, I didn't know how to aim up with the girl for most of the battle so I spent a lot of time doing nothing after the brother died. 

Took a look at the controls before starting my next run, this time it went much better. Killed the first boss with relative ease, but I died very quickly by the ice girl's initial burst. I kept trying until I experienced a crash during the phase where the boss drops the projectile cubes on you: I was under her using the sister, then I used a bomb (white square), which crashed the game. I tried this again and the game crashed again under the same conditions. I went in for a third time, not using the girl this time, and it randomly crashed again. Sucks.

Closing thoughts: the dialogue between the characters is cute, I could get a grasp on what their personalities are like with just a few lines of dialogue. The art is amateur at best but is still very charming, it might even work to your favor considering ZUN. I don't see why I would ever want to use the sister over the brother, considering I have to actually aim with her. I can only assume she does more damage? Anyway, this is a neat little game that I sucked pretty hard at, I can see bullet hell enjoyers liking it.

More enemies are planned, including melee ones. Thanks for playing again.

Thanks for playing!

I feel like the scythe attack could be a tad bit less delayed.

There is a weapon upgrade that makes it swing faster, but I could tweak the base speed.

This opinion is not universal.

Thank you for playing!

Heyo, thanks for playing again!

I think you should lean less on passive damage resistances and more on the ones that modify the alchemist's moves and abilities if you want the player to feel like they're choosing a build

Fair point, I added the resistances basically as content padding. I'd love to hear whatever buff ideas you might have.

Going by the description alone the one that gives you a chance to absorb enemy elements seems like something I would either fail to notice when it happens or not be in a position to use that specific element effectively

Yeah, that one's very situational.  The yellow buffs are all quite powerful so my idea was to have a kinda crappy one to dilute the pool a bit. Maybe I'll buff it.

The merchant lady's audio was very bass boosted and distorted, idk if it's just too loud or it simply didn't agree with my headphones.

Terribly sorry about that, evidently my laptop's speakers have shit bass. I've deployed a hotfix that should help.

After changing the resolution the arsenal was the only one that didn't rescale properly until I restarted

Noted.

i'll be there... to play demos.

looking forward to playing =w=

Very fun and extremely challenging if you're directionally challenged like I am. Platforming is fun and feels fresh, game feel is satisfying, and it has a cute premise. Also, has exceptional taste in easter eggs. ;)

I've taken note of your feedback during the stream, I'll try making the enemy spawns even clearer. Your continued support is much appreciated! :D

Thanks for playing!

I often found myself being tripped up by expectations of having all actions on mouse click and all switches on the keyboard.

That's a fair assumption, my reasoning for placing the mixing toggle on RMB is because I found it more comfortable to have your left hand free for QWEASD inputs. If mixing is bound to CTRL or SHIFT, you have to keep holding that while simultaneously inputting your chems. That being said, I do agree that it's a bit of an arbitrary control scheme, I'll playtest with your proposed bindings and see if they feel good after overcoming my muscle memory.

Falling down a bridge later on during the tutorial booted me back all the way to the title screen

That is intentional, I didn't want to teleport the player back up because a) it would make no sense in-universe, b) killing you for a mistake like that is fitting with the rest of the game's unforgiving nature, and c) it's kinda funny.

It's a bit unwieldy to switch elements on the fly, so I found myself just sticking to the healing green and swapping to a single offensive element here and there to finish off enemies.

That is a valid (and expected) way to play, at least for the time being. The first biome only tests your ability to determine/remember enemy weaknesses and exploit them, later stages should have trickier enemies that warrant more in-depth use of your abilities (e.g., having to use a certain chemical to make an enemy vulnerable, then using another that it's actually weak to).

Sometimes with all the dynamic lighting it's hard to tell the red explosive barrels from the orange non-flammable ones.

I think I'll add a decal on top of the flammable and healing barrels to make them undeniably distinct.

The elemental system in general felt very low-impact for weapons

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that the various status effects you can apply to enemies aren't very impactful. Is that accurate? If so, this is sort of by design at the moment. All the enemies are relatively weak trash mobs, there is no point in using status effects when you can just kill them outright. The miniboss fight is a nice parallel to this since, in my experience, applying Rust and Corrode makes the fight MUCH easier. Not only does it make it easier to keep your distance, you also increase your damage output in the long-run.

The scythe felt very situational, since so much in this game can quite literally blow up on your face.

Understandable, a lot of people get scared of going into close-quarters (and rightfully so). I will mention that you can easily take down the fire Mines with the scythe, one cryo slash will instantly apply Freeze and neutralize the bomb. 

I love the imsim-ish touches like how you can get manipulate enemies into attacking each other. It's just a shame most of these interactions are not particularly useful yet.

The infighting wasn't meant to be necessarily useful, it's just a fun thing that can occasionally happen. This is tangentially related but I have plans for a sort of "third party" enemy faction that is hostile not only to you but the rest of the roster, which is a way to a balance the ridiculous strength they'll have. Again, just something that sounds really cool and therefore I want to add it.

Some skill tree nodes look connected, like they're being presented as if there is a set path with prerequisites, but you can just skip to the bottom if you have enough currency. 

Good point, I'll remove the vertical connecting lines and make it clearer how each category is independent.

It is nice that you can respec, though if this ends up as a roguelike I assume that will have to be removed.

Why is that? I don't see any inherent issue with respecing during a run. I plan to delegate weapon upgrades to a special workbench that you come across between floors, that way you can't change your build in the middle of a fight, maybe that solves the issue you saw?

I don't like how the primary threats in this game are quick gank kills. I don't know what could be done about that when healing is so easy.

How about enemies that apply something on you that make you unable to heal or make healing hurt you? I could also nerf your healing abilities.

You can manipulate that large laser boss enemy into being stuck doing nothing by making it try to chase you through a gap that's too narrow for it to fit.

Perhaps I can make it so the enemy AI detects when it's stuck and begins blind firing.

Overall I found this a nice game, though quite a bit earlier in development than I had expected from footage.

I get that comment quite a bit, I'm not sure why. Is it because the visuals are relatively polished?

I see, thanks. I was expecting the super-effective dummy part to be the trickiest part since the game doesn't flat-out tell you what to do, so I'm not surprised to see it listed.

I think perhaps the difficulty early game could be adjusted a bit if this is going the roguelite direction in the end

It's funny because I culled the amount of enemies that spawn in this build but it might've not been enough. I'll fiddle with the numbers again.

I would try [the slowdown], put out a test-build and see how people respond to it. 

I'll try implementing it later today, I can send you a test build if I think it seems promising enough to test.

 I think maybe adding a "filler enemy" something, more or less not that dangerous and slow could be good to fill out early rooms before ramping up the difficulty.  Otherwise: stationary turret enemies, enemies that change their chemical setup, 

Stationary enemies are a cool idea, I might steal that one. Enemies that change their weaknesses are already planned and are reserved for later levels, it sounds like too much for the first biome.

I want a rifle-version of the gun.

What do you mean by "rifle"? That could range from a Garand-esque single fire weapon to a machinegun. Either way, I don't plan to add any more conventional guns since they would massively overlap with the pistol secondary functionality-wise. My ideas for new weapons are less conventional, among them are: a firehose primary; gas grenade secondaries; a shield secondary that absorbs damage; a utility that spawns drones that damage enemies and heal you.   

Which parts did you get stuck on?

Messed with the settings on boot, the lack of fullscreen/borderless options slightly irks me.  It's interesting how changing some settings, like V-sync, causes the entire window to reload. I was faced with this after coming back to the main menu, not sure what's going on there. I restarted the game after seeing this to make sure I hadn't broken anything.

The ship controls fairly well but the changes in the camera position in the tutorial felt a little disorienting to me, the way it pans to the left or the right. Other than that, everything felt and controlled nicely. The toggle fire doesn't make sense to me, why would that be the default option in a game where every bullet should be carefully considered? A toggle incentivizes blindly spamming, not precision shots. 

Played through the first mission, I can confirm that I definitely don't like the camera movement. Having the camera centered on your ship or following your cursor makes a lot more sense to me, otherwise you're constantly having your view moved around against your will which makes it difficult to aim.  I took no hits but got a C grade, I suppose I used too much fuel. I don't get why the "damage taken" text is colored red when it says 0x100.

The second level took me a bit longer, I was a bit lost on what to do after picking up the badge (?) guarded by a laser. I probably should've read the mission briefing. Having your fuel and shop currency be one in the same is an interesting mechanic.

Died in the third level after getting hit by one too many mine projectiles. Played it safer the second time round and made it through with relative ease. I've noticed that I'm using the air brake a lot during these missions, the ship just moves too fast for the cramped environments. I'm having fun but I'm admittedly starting to question if the game will start switching stuff up soon, it feels pretty repetitive right now. A story could help you out here: you've already got all these nice characters, why not make them talk with you after a mission to establish a plot? Something like that.

Here are some thoughts I had playing the subsequent batch of missions:

• I've come to the conclusion that the drone buddies are RIDICULOUSLY strong, at least with the crew I have. 
• The stuff in the shop feels a bit lackluster, I was hoping you'd be able to buy different weapons and stuff but it's all plain stat boosts or drone stuff. 
• I'm not sure what the badge thing you can collect does, does it give you more money?
• I have a new ship now, I have no idea why. Is it something I bought in the shop? Oh, it's a submarine for the water mission. Sure, why not.
• The levels started feeling aimless, I'm just meandering through them while shooting whatever I see and picking up crystals. 
• I went into the tutorial shop level and my drone bought something that costed 5k credits on its own. What the fuck.
• The cat enemies are what's doing most of my health in, they're hard to see (especially when they hide behind parts of the foreground). On that note, how are we fighting animals like cats and crabs with ships? Are the ship and crew tiny?
• The first big open level was more fun than the previous missions, I got to cut loose more and explore.
• Got to the first boss and absolutely shredded it. 
• I see that you have different purchasing options in different biomes, that's a relief. 
• God DAMN there are a lot of characters.

Closing thoughts: the game gets a lot right but I feel like something's missing, or off. The gameplay is passively fun but feels really low stakes, there's no sense of urgency or danger when I'm going through a level. Missions don't have objectives that force me to take conscious actions, I just kind of fly through the level mindlessly while shooting things until I win. The "money is fuel" mechanic is cool on paper but not once did I risk running out of money in a level, it's basically superfluous. It's unfortunate because there's clearly a lot of love poured into every crack and crevice of this game, it just feels like it isn't reaching its full potential. The game seems to be far in development so I doubt you'll get much use out of my assessment but it's what I got, hopefully it was of some help.

The UI is properly scaled now. I'm playing on a different monitor than last time so I don't know if you actually added proper scaling or not, but I'm glad either way.

I looked like this in the cutscene after destroying the player tank clone in the tutorial, not sure if it's intentional but it made me chuckle.

Beat the first level with relative ease and watched the replay. I still don't understand the point of this but it's neat, I suppose. I would add an on-screen prompt for pressing ESC to exit the replay, I was lost for a second.

You misspelled "independently"  in the chaingun description. I picked the landsword (nice) rockets for the second mission, which I expected would replace the coaxial chaingun. Turns out that it goes into a separate secondary weapon slot that you are not introduced to in the tutorial. I had to go into the keybinds to find the binding for the rockets.

I beat the subsequent levels with the 40mm cannon and the rocket secondary. I don't know if you made the game easier or I'm just more well rested this time, but the game feels a lot easier.  The third-person view is fun but the sights option is simply superior for combat, I only find myself using third-person when I'm in one of those goofy "drive in circles around the guy" fights or when I'm just coursing through the map. 

The railgun doesn't seem to land exactly where I'm aiming, it goes slightly up and to the left. I don't know if you did something to the 90mm cannon but it feels pretty usable instead of just being a meme weapon. It's cool that you can play as enemy tanks, I find it a little lame that you still have access to the sci-fi repair minigame with them but I understand why you made it that way.

I had no framerate issues, whether that's due to optimizations on your end or not is a mystery to me.

Good fun, I hope to see more in time.

Thanks for playing!

In actual combat I think holding down the mouse-button to change your setup could benefit from this either slowing down or "freezing" the game.

Maybe something like a second of time slowdown when you enable mixing? I suppose that could help but I'm afraid it would lead to players spamming RMB to exploit the slowdown. I'll experiment with this.

This is an early comment but I I probably still have not figured it out. See that as either a detriment towards the tutorial or me as a player.

It's probably the game's fault! This is the first time I've tried making a tutorial so it's probably not great. I can answer any mechanic related questions you may or may not have.

Hey, thanks for playing again! It seems I can always count on you for DD feedback. I'll play your demo first chance I get.

It's very easy to accidentally add an element you don't want by trying to move too early

I agree, I've done that a few times myself. Unfortunately I don't see a way to fix this, we'll just have to be more careful when mixing stuff. In my opinion this pales in comparison to the issues brought on by the past alchemy control schemes.

Forcing you to stand still while mixing elements makes things harder which I assume it's intentional but it also makes it harder to go for bigger combinations.

It is intended. The player can choose between quickly making simple mixtures on the fly or taking the time to hide behind cover and make a more powerful mixture. I might buff the high tier chems to compensate for this indirect nerf.

I'm not sure if the super effective damage is better or simply more evident...

If memory serves me right, I did make the damage numbers more obvious. It could also be due to the tutorial showing you what super-effective damage looks like. Either way, I'm glad it's clearer now.

... the rest rarely deal enough damage to kill you when you can chug healing like nobody's business.

Funny that you mention that, I'm thinking of adding "hard damage" to Hard mode. That is, when you take damage, some percentage of that damage takes away from your maximum health. For example, if you take 40 damage and half of it is hard damage, your maximum health would lower to 80. Your max health would regenerate over time or upon clearing the room. What do you think of that?

Upgrades are interesting, the scythe damage one is great, but I spent all the other points on the alchemical tank ones since they're always useful and the rest seem situational.

That's fair. Keep in mind that you can only play 1/3 of a run at the moment, you'd have enough scrap to get those more situational upgrades in the full game.

You can press the M key to cheat in money for upgrades.

Changelog:

• Full tutorial
• Finalized alchemy controls
• Weapon upgrades mechanic
• Visual clarity overhaul
• Gameplay balancing

Read the full devlog here.

Interesting idea! Your suggested scheme would probably help with ergonomics and would be more familiar to players who come from Magicka. Being unable to move while mixing is a non-issue, you can't do it effectively with the current controls either. That being said, there is the drawback of relegating the secondary fire input to a less intuitive binding, which might make no difference in the DD57 build but could (and likely will) prove to be problematic in the future. 

What if I moved dash to space then used shift as the alchemy key? You'd hold shift, use QWEASD to mix your stuff, then let go of shift to return to normal controls. The alchemy key could also be a toggle, similar to the old mixing menu, but I fear this would muddy up the user experience by adding more buttons in the way of combat. It could result in some frustrating experiences where you forget to turn off the alchemy mode and try to fight an enemy, only for you to not move and for your mixture to get all messed up (picrel).

Additionally, the alchemy key could clear your mixture for you, removing the need for the "clear mixture" binding. This would free up the tab key for other stuff.