I'm looking for a ton of feedback on my recent jam game, before taking it on as a larger project. It's a modern shmup, with the aim of bringing more people into the genre - a really clean art style that just uses simple shapes, it should play at 120fps on most modern PC's, and has a ton of audio sync stuff.

This is the jam version of the game: https://wayfarergames.itch.io/neon-barrage

I would love some feedback on:

• performance and any bugs/issues you have
• what you think of the overall concept - is it something you'd buy, with a few more songs and mod support? I'm aiming for roughly 6-7 songs for the initial release, 2-3 minutes each.
• what you think of the visual style - does it catch your attention? 
• I would love to know some of your gaming habits - e.g. how many hours you play a week, what genres you usually play, that sort of thing. 
• did the scoring system make you try again to get onto the leaderboard? 
• how was the difficulty curve?

I'm also happy to take any other feedback, but I'm mostly focused on the overall concept for now. I'm aware the switch between wide and focus fire is weird - that'll be taken out, it was for the jam's theme and I'm not happy with how it turned out.

Hi WayfarerGames! 

Played with your game for a while:) First of all it is a great concept, really fun to play - here is my answers to your questions:

• performance and any bugs/issues you have:
  • I didn't encounter any performance issues, played on 60fps though
  • Some other issues I encountered:
    • I tried to click on the end game menu with my mouse and the game stopped responding - had to forcefully shut down the game and start again
    • Some of the shots hurt you and some do not, Is there any differentiation? 

• what you think of the overall concept - is it something you'd buy, with a few more songs and mod support? I'm aiming for roughly 6-7 songs for the initial release, 2-3 minutes each.
  • Nice concept, which is getting a lot of attention in the last few years, especially with bitsaber for VR consoles. As far as I understand there are a lot of music savvy fans out there who really enjoyed this kind of games. You should consider adding some better known songs in the base game or in additional packs.
• what you think of the visual style - does it catch your attention? 
  • Nice style! I think the game should use a wider screen if played on a pc.
• I would love to know some of your gaming habits - e.g. how many hours you play a week, what genres you usually play, that sort of thing. 
  • I play about 2 hours a day:) mostly PC fps and rts :)
• did the scoring system make you try again to get onto the leaderboard? 
  • I actually didn't know about the leaderboard - maybe you should display your position on the game over screen?
• how was the difficulty curve?
• I would start a little bit slower. As there is al lot that going on on the screen, maybe you should ease the player in.

Anyway I had a lot of fun playing your game, thanks for sharing!

Hope this review was helpful:)

Shifful Studio

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Great, I'm glad you enjoyed it! Thank you so much for the feedback, it's really useful.

I tried to click on the end game menu with my mouse

Yeah this is a known issue, it's actually designed to be navigated with a controller, so mouse input breaks it! 

Some of the shots hurt you and some do not, Is there any differentiation? 

All of the shots hurt you, but your hit box is actually the glowing white circle at the centre. Well, it's actually a tiny bit smaller than that 😉 

I actually didn't know about the leaderboard 

This is some of the best feedback I could've asked for 😂 definitely need to make that more obvious! 

This is all incredibly useful and will help shape the game going forward. Thanks again!

Hey WayfarerGames! Holy damn, this game feels great! The music, the graphics, the UI, everything is on point! Like a wonderful medley of Just Shapes and Beats and Asteroids. I highly recommend fleshing this out into a bigger game. You could have some lore exposition, enemy types and progression etc.

I think the only suggestions I would make are to increase the width on monitors - there's just so much space to play with that's unused, and to adjust the difficulty curve - goes balls to the walls after the first pentagons.

This was a short fun experience, would love to see more. All the best!