Hi. Thanks for trying the game and leaving a comment. Others have noticed the lack of shields. I think I might add some shields or armor after the game jam is over to avoid the one-hit kill.

Note: Dodging is easiest in form 1, harder in form 2, and hardest in form 3. Currently, the easiest way to play the game is to use all of the defensive capabilities with the TACTICAL (form 1) transformation early on. After whittling down the enemy missile launchers with this technique, you can swap to other forms to use your weapons as well.

Hi. Thanks for the comment. I tried to put in a lot of effort into the tutorial. I'm glad you tried it. :)

It's possible to win the game by sticking to any transformation, although form 3 is the most difficult with which to dodge. If you managed to win in form 3, congratulations!

Thank you for the comment. Excellent points raised. Here are some things that might make the gameplay easier:

1. The ASSAULT (3) form is actually the hardest to use defensively. It comes with a dodge penalty that causes the dodge marker to speed through the dodge meter more quickly. The benefit to using it is that you are destroying the Missile Defense Units at a constant rate of about 4 enemies for every 5 seconds.
2. The TACTICAL (1) form (called STEALTH in the help menu) form is the easiest to use defensively. It comes with a dodge bonus that causes the dodge marker to move more slowly through the dodge meter. The downside to using it is that it could take longer to destroy the enemies, because it never fires any weapons. It instead relies on the defensive options, jamming/hacking enemy missiles and using countermeasures, to score kills.
3. The numbers on the right-hand side indicate, from top to bottom, the total number of enemy Missile Defense Units, and the total number of missiles flying in space (both friendly and enemy). This is how you know if you're making progress.

I agree that death occurs too easily, so I would probably want to give your ship some armor in the future. Perhaps the different forms would have different armor levels.

Thank you for the comment.

I'm very glad that the tutorial was helpful. I had spent quite a bit of time on that, as it was very important to me that players not feel lost.

I tend to agree that death happens too quickly. Originally I had planned for the ship to take damage when hit, but I ended up simplifying things greatly since the initial design phase. Nearer to the end of development I was contemplating giving the ship some armor so it could take some hits as you suggested. Perhaps this feature deserves a revisit, along with some balancing.

Thank you for the kind comment.

Hi. Thanks for the comment. I'm still considering ways of improving the tutorial or help menus to make gameplay easier to understand.

I'm sorry to hear that you had trouble with the keybinds.

• If you press Spacebar, then if you're being prompted to dodge, then the dodging marker stops moving.
• If you press Q or Z, and if you're in Spaceship form #1, then the Jammer is activated and the HUD shows its status is 0. Missiles that are affected rotate and fly upward.
  
• If you press W or X, and if you're in Spaceship forms #1 or #2, then the Countermeasures are activated and the HUD shows its status is 0. Missiles that are affected rotate in-place and explode.
  
• If you press 1, 2, or 3, then the game attempts to transform your ship into another form. The center part of the HUD shows the transformation happening, and then the left part of the HUD shows your new selection. Of course, if you select the same ship that you already have, then nothing happens.
• If you press P or ESC, you pause the game.
• If you press Enter, P, or ESC, you dismiss any tip or pause message and unpause the game.

Did you try the tutorial? I tried to make the mechanics clear there with a fairly detailed walkthrough. There is only one known mistake in the tutorial, where it says that Z is the alternative key for Countermeasures, when it should say X is the alternative.

If all of this has failed, do you have a non-QWERTY keyboard layout by any chance?

Thanks for the comment and for trying it out. If it's not already clear, missiles can be classified based on the following categories and behaviors:

1. Attacking you: They are pointed straight downward and are making their way to you. 
2. Jammed/Hacked: They rotate and fly upward (and kill enemies). Look at each vertical end of a missile to determine its rotation.
3. Countered: They stop in place and rotate until they explode (and kill enemies if they are positioned at the top of the screen or beyond).
4. Your missiles: They fly upward in a janky, horizontally-oscillating, manner while pointed the wrong way. I was going to fix this, but it all looked so quirky and helped to easily distinguished your missiles from their missiles, that I decided to keep this behavior. :)

Thanks again.