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(+1)

There's some interesting potential in restricting the player's movement like this to add something meaningful to the game in return. There needs to be more, though. Aiming is one thing, but as-is, it is way too situational. Most angles go straight off-screen from most positions. 

The control scheme is awkward. Why can't I aim by holding down a key and then pressing the direction I want? Using up and down is counter-intuitive enough on its own, but the aiming uses some sort of gradual, awkward truncated scrolling for holding the keys instead of simple digital inputs on key press. 

Why is the sword a toggle rather than a hold or having its own button? These state-dependent selection commands are very awkward, as I have to look to my character to know its current state. The sword felt pretty useless, too.

Why is there only one movement speed, for that matter? Movement is already limited, so by forcing me to move quickly, a lot of potential depth in that space is already lost. I can barely position my character correctly to take down the tiny enemies by lightly tapping the arrow keys.

The low base shooting rate at the start is annoying. Power-ups are a bit too high-impact for my liking.

I tried playing on hard first. I found the movement too fast for me to consistently dodge the waves on the first boss pattern, so I tried medium and had the same issue. Then I went to easy and got through the rest of the game that way. The patterns are nice, but only the swinging laser one feels like it's getting any use out of the game's 1D movement. That could probably use some telegraphing though.

Thank you for the feedback. The boss's first attack is supposed to be learnable, but I made it in a rush for the demo so it may be unbalanced. In fact, it's probably the hardest attack on normal. I'll definitely change it in the future.

I took the control scheme from a  SNES shooter I played a long time ago. It definitely had a lot more angles, but at my current art and programming knowledge it would be hard to implement more states without it looking weird. That's one of the main issues with the player along with the gravity-defying projectiles. Adding a "slow movement" button would be simple but I don't know how it would synergize with the rest of the controls.

The sword has a constant hitbox, even when it's down, so making it a hold would change how it behaves. Generally I don't want the player to have to use too many keys. The sword is mainly for scoring and making dodging easier. If you didn't need it that means you were too good at the game (or I didn't explain properly how it works.) To be honest, it's very unfinished.