Glad to see someone with a positive response to the difficulty! When I was developing the challenges, they probably took me around 10 tries per challenge to unlock another ship, but once I had gone back and played the game again, I managed to get almost every ship in a single try. Keep at it, and you'll get better--no doubt.

Thanks again for playing!

Saltyparts

8/11/19 9:44PM CT

Thanks! We worked real hard on it!

I completely agree that the challenges aren't for the faint of heart. We wanted to make it hard as to emulate the difficulty of old school arcade games, and unlocking them is much more rewarding that way.  That being said, if too many people think it's too hard, we'll likely reduce the difficulty to a more manageable place.

Currently it works by taking the averages of all of the play tester and developer times and increases it by a single standard deviation so we can assume to unlock a ship around ~15% of games. The only problem is that we've had a lot of practice with the game, and so our average is likely higher than most players.

Here are some tips I found which helped me:

• Try out the pacifist ships, the later ones can be used to unlock one of the best ships in the game!
• Avoid the masochist ships as they're meant for hardcore players who want an extra challenge.
• Running is a fantastic strategy, just don't let the enemies pile up too much.

Thanks for checking it out too, this game is still a work in progress as far as balancing is concerned, though a little imbalance goes a long way!

Saltyparts

8/11/19 7:01AM CT

First, thanks for taking a look at the game, we worked pretty hard on it so we wouldn't want it to go to waste. The new installer has no agreement to weigh it down anymore! You might notice a new readme file with copyright information however.

Saltyparts

8/10/19 5:42PM CT