Ship It!

pre game jam:

the obstruction had no clear instructions to clear. 

fatal design flaw: damaged nitro makes levels uncompleteable, if you cant repair it. yay potential softlocks.

 super unresponsive controls.

mouse only controls makes the game frustrating. trying to hit the gate is hard as you need to go full thrust, but activating the thrusters with the mouse will turn the ship as you cant activate both at the same time, making you miss the gate.

using chronostasis more often for precise turning made the ship feel a lot better.

p somehow activated a killswitch that disabled my entire ship. i was just trying to find a pause button.

j skipped levels. i was just trying to repair the mess that p had caused.

tuto real, astroid feels... really. kinda a nitpick, but i found those really funny.

and then the minefield. you evil bastard. WHY DO MINES KILL YOU AND FORCE A RESET FROM THE START WHEN YOU SHOOT THEM. YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID. YOU LINE US UP PERFECTLY TO SHOOT THE MINE, DARING US TO SHOOT IT AND THEN GIVE A GAME OVER. USUALLY THE GAME JUST RESETS THE LEVEL AND TELLS YOU YOUR MISTAKE. BUT HERE? NOOO THAT WOULD BE TOO NICE. that was legit the most evil thing ever and i will never forgive you. you know what you did. that was on purpose to make players suffer. 

a problem with this game is scrap. scrap saves from level to level. you need scrap or you wont make it far. all it takes is a nitro damaged and you cant beat a level. say an unfortunate mishap due to an EVIL DEVELOPER happened, you could skip levels with j, but you still need scrap so you need to at least play enough of previous levels to gain scrap. I HATE YOU.

oh wait no look at that, scrap is save after a game over. huh. well then im sorry for accusing you of being more evil than you actually are. dont get it wrong though, you are still evil, just less so. then scrap isnt really an issue after killing the first enemy as you get so much of it.

post game jam:

i thought you said you fixed spelling. tuto real is staring me in the face.

i cant find the stated "ui improvements". i find the changes to the velocity ui to be a downgrade. the first one was better.

the changes to thrusters i like, but it was a bit confusing coming from the pre game jam version. now it works a lot more intuitively. 

to the missile. it is op as can be. it locks on to targets on screen and is a oneshot. to compensate it has a cooldown and lasers were nerfed to not oneshot, but instead like 5 shot enemies. now i dont want to make any accusations, but judging by the gameplay trailer there is only one person i know that has struggled to be able to aim at enemies and would greatly benefit from being able to no skill destroy them when they come on screen without needing to aim. im definitely not suggesting that you implemented the missile as you couldnt aim to hit enemies and wanted a way to kill them without having to aim, im just pointing out some interesting facts.

now to the "better enemy ai". all you changed is that enemies now wander all over the place and lock on to the player sooner than before. nothing has gotten "better" the enemies are now more annoying to deal with as they spread out all over the place. "better" ai would slowly nudge them towards the player, not just make them fly off randomly. they just mostly cling to the edges of the map and are annoying to deal with.

cuz guess what, the movement still feels like im trying to control a car on ice with a malfunctioning remote that is also incredibly impractical. the only reason this game is hard and annoying is because the controls are horrible for precision, which the gates need. and because the ship steers like its on ice. it is so unresponsive, that its kinda impressive. like its supposed to have thrusters. having the middle thruster on full blast should make you go forward fast. instead even with them on full blast it is impossible to reverse without putting the side thrusters on max, which will change your direction due to horrible controls, or getting bounced back by the edge of the map. at this point abandon the space theme, turn the background into ice and make our ship a penguin and the enemies seals. then i wouldnt be complaining about ICE PHYSICS IN SPACE.