Messed with the settings on boot, the lack of fullscreen/borderless options slightly irks me. It's interesting how changing some settings, like V-sync, causes the entire window to reload. I was faced with this after coming back to the main menu, not sure what's going on there. I restarted the game after seeing this to make sure I hadn't broken anything.
The ship controls fairly well but the changes in the camera position in the tutorial felt a little disorienting to me, the way it pans to the left or the right. Other than that, everything felt and controlled nicely. The toggle fire doesn't make sense to me, why would that be the default option in a game where every bullet should be carefully considered? A toggle incentivizes blindly spamming, not precision shots.
Played through the first mission, I can confirm that I definitely don't like the camera movement. Having the camera centered on your ship or following your cursor makes a lot more sense to me, otherwise you're constantly having your view moved around against your will which makes it difficult to aim. I took no hits but got a C grade, I suppose I used too much fuel. I don't get why the "damage taken" text is colored red when it says 0x100.
The second level took me a bit longer, I was a bit lost on what to do after picking up the badge (?) guarded by a laser. I probably should've read the mission briefing. Having your fuel and shop currency be one in the same is an interesting mechanic.
Died in the third level after getting hit by one too many mine projectiles. Played it safer the second time round and made it through with relative ease. I've noticed that I'm using the air brake a lot during these missions, the ship just moves too fast for the cramped environments. I'm having fun but I'm admittedly starting to question if the game will start switching stuff up soon, it feels pretty repetitive right now. A story could help you out here: you've already got all these nice characters, why not make them talk with you after a mission to establish a plot? Something like that.
Here are some thoughts I had playing the subsequent batch of missions:
- I've come to the conclusion that the drone buddies are RIDICULOUSLY strong, at least with the crew I have.
- The stuff in the shop feels a bit lackluster, I was hoping you'd be able to buy different weapons and stuff but it's all plain stat boosts or drone stuff.
- I'm not sure what the badge thing you can collect does, does it give you more money?
- I have a new ship now, I have no idea why. Is it something I bought in the shop? Oh, it's a submarine for the water mission. Sure, why not.
- The levels started feeling aimless, I'm just meandering through them while shooting whatever I see and picking up crystals.
- I went into the tutorial shop level and my drone bought something that costed 5k credits on its own. What the fuck.
- The cat enemies are what's doing most of my health in, they're hard to see (especially when they hide behind parts of the foreground). On that note, how are we fighting animals like cats and crabs with ships? Are the ship and crew tiny?
- The first big open level was more fun than the previous missions, I got to cut loose more and explore.
- Got to the first boss and absolutely shredded it.
- I see that you have different purchasing options in different biomes, that's a relief.
- God DAMN there are a lot of characters.
Closing thoughts: the game gets a lot right but I feel like something's missing, or off. The gameplay is passively fun but feels really low stakes, there's no sense of urgency or danger when I'm going through a level. Missions don't have objectives that force me to take conscious actions, I just kind of fly through the level mindlessly while shooting things until I win. The "money is fuel" mechanic is cool on paper but not once did I risk running out of money in a level, it's basically superfluous. It's unfortunate because there's clearly a lot of love poured into every crack and crevice of this game, it just feels like it isn't reaching its full potential. The game seems to be far in development so I doubt you'll get much use out of my assessment but it's what I got, hopefully it was of some help.