Wow, this is such a cool concept. Like a mystery Metroidvania. Unravelling the clues and the abilities I'd need to navigate the ship was really cool. I was a bit lost at first, but I eventually got it figured out. The abilities were a good mix of traditional and unique to this environment. Every room was recognizable enough, once I figured out what was going on I never really felt like I was getting lost, although some sort of map would have been nice. The music was appropriately atmospheric, and the hit effect on enemies made it very obvious when damage was being done.
Some feedback:
- While the concept of unlocking abilities and then learning how to unlock them later remotely is super cool, its implementation was fairly frustrating for 2 reasons. 1 ) the code text would disappear too quickly. On multiple occasions I'd have to make my way back to the same terminal to get the second half of the code and I eventually pulled out my camera and just started taking pictures of my monitor real quick, and 2) typing the codes was pretty tedious once you had more than 2. It would maybe be nicer if your character just remembered the codes once collected and you could choose which ability you want to unlock.
- That fire room was BRUTAL. I like the drama of it all, and thank you so much for putting a checkpoint in there, but still... I wish the fire's speed had been consistent throughout, it was pretty frustrating having it speed up behind me when I wanted a moment to recover. I also encountered a fairly big bug by going through the vent at the end of the chamber rather than going towards the terminal, it kept spawning me inside of the big fire wall and I'd have to spam re-enter the vent on spawn to get out of it.
- Combat didn't feel super great. I do like that the character's weapon has some range to it, and unlocking the lasser weapon later feels satisfying to use (although I don't know if it deals increased damage), but I was never certain if I was going to knockback an enemy or stun it a little bit when hitting it, so I never knew if I needed to prepare to retreat or if I could fully engage.
All that said, this is a super cool concept with some really cool ideas and I enjoyed my time with it. Great work!