I have a few suggestion; one for balance and the others visual tweaks.
For balance, I think the player should be given full shields on continue. If a player struggled with 8 HP, having to try again with 2 ain't gonna help much.
As for visuals, could you get rid of the screen shaking when you're shields are gone? At best it's a distraction, and at worst it makes tracking enemies harder.
Lastly, I think the status bar could use a little tweaking. The way the meters are segmented appears as if your shields and blast max out at 6 units when they always increment/decrement by 2, meaning you actually have 3. And as for upgrades, you only need 2 capsules for one, so you hardly need a meter for it at all, probably an icon should've sufficed?
And for picking up the shield cap upgrade, it might be better to visualize this with a larger meter rather than an ×1/×2. If you move the blast meter and shorten the upgrade meter, (since it doesn't need to be as big as it is), you should have enough space to show it like this.
Note how 7 units are shown here, since the cap upgrade as it's currently displayed shows an empty meter with an ×2. With this layout, 5 units would be rendered as 5 blue squares, and we'd still have 8 hits total clearly visualized.
Already I've seen an exciting game with the progression through the solar system being reminiscent of Konami's Gyrus! And thanks for reading!
This is a poster child for constructive criticism!
Great thoughts and incredibly thorough explanation! Thanks for playing the game. I'm so glad you enjoyed it. I will have to check out Gyrus. I've never played it.
Seriously thank you for the feedback. I personally liked the screen shake with low health, but I definitely see what you mean about making tracking more difficult, so I dialed it back quite a bit so it's hopefully not so distracting.
Also, I adopted (closely) your status bar recommendation and it actually opened up a lot of space to fix some things and add some features!
I hope you enjoy the changes. I also hope you don't mind my adding you to the credits under my list of play testers!
No problem! And I don't mind it at all! You even used the full-sized icons, that looks better than my mockup!
Seeing how the shield meter grows now has me wonder if it should be an incremental upgrade like firepower rather than instantly give you the largest shield. It would slightly increase difficulty sure, but since you've made enemies a bit easier in early stages now, I think this would fit along with the smoother difficulty scaling.
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I have a few suggestion; one for balance and the others visual tweaks.
For balance, I think the player should be given full shields on continue. If a player struggled with 8 HP, having to try again with 2 ain't gonna help much.
As for visuals, could you get rid of the screen shaking when you're shields are gone? At best it's a distraction, and at worst it makes tracking enemies harder.
Lastly, I think the status bar could use a little tweaking. The way the meters are segmented appears as if your shields and blast max out at 6 units when they always increment/decrement by 2, meaning you actually have 3. And as for upgrades, you only need 2 capsules for one, so you hardly need a meter for it at all, probably an icon should've sufficed?
And for picking up the shield cap upgrade, it might be better to visualize this with a larger meter rather than an ×1/×2. If you move the blast meter and shorten the upgrade meter, (since it doesn't need to be as big as it is), you should have enough space to show it like this.
Note how 7 units are shown here, since the cap upgrade as it's currently displayed shows an empty meter with an ×2. With this layout, 5 units would be rendered as 5 blue squares, and we'd still have 8 hits total clearly visualized.
Already I've seen an exciting game with the progression through the solar system being reminiscent of Konami's Gyrus! And thanks for reading!
This is a poster child for constructive criticism!
Great thoughts and incredibly thorough explanation! Thanks for playing the game. I'm so glad you enjoyed it. I will have to check out Gyrus. I've never played it.
Seriously thank you for the feedback. I personally liked the screen shake with low health, but I definitely see what you mean about making tracking more difficult, so I dialed it back quite a bit so it's hopefully not so distracting.
Also, I adopted (closely) your status bar recommendation and it actually opened up a lot of space to fix some things and add some features!
I hope you enjoy the changes. I also hope you don't mind my adding you to the credits under my list of play testers!
No problem! And I don't mind it at all! You even used the full-sized icons, that looks better than my mockup!
Seeing how the shield meter grows now has me wonder if it should be an incremental upgrade like firepower rather than instantly give you the largest shield. It would slightly increase difficulty sure, but since you've made enemies a bit easier in early stages now, I think this would fit along with the smoother difficulty scaling.
I've got an upcoming update that'll include that, along with quite a few additions and adjustments. Way more than I figured I'd have room for.
The biggest improvement I've got incoming is that the waves will consistently move from one to the next without skipping. Hoping to upload it tonight!