Thanks for playing!
I often found myself being tripped up by expectations of having all actions on mouse click and all switches on the keyboard.
That's a fair assumption, my reasoning for placing the mixing toggle on RMB is because I found it more comfortable to have your left hand free for QWEASD inputs. If mixing is bound to CTRL or SHIFT, you have to keep holding that while simultaneously inputting your chems. That being said, I do agree that it's a bit of an arbitrary control scheme, I'll playtest with your proposed bindings and see if they feel good after overcoming my muscle memory.
Falling down a bridge later on during the tutorial booted me back all the way to the title screen
That is intentional, I didn't want to teleport the player back up because a) it would make no sense in-universe, b) killing you for a mistake like that is fitting with the rest of the game's unforgiving nature, and c) it's kinda funny.
It's a bit unwieldy to switch elements on the fly, so I found myself just sticking to the healing green and swapping to a single offensive element here and there to finish off enemies.
That is a valid (and expected) way to play, at least for the time being. The first biome only tests your ability to determine/remember enemy weaknesses and exploit them, later stages should have trickier enemies that warrant more in-depth use of your abilities (e.g., having to use a certain chemical to make an enemy vulnerable, then using another that it's actually weak to).
Sometimes with all the dynamic lighting it's hard to tell the red explosive barrels from the orange non-flammable ones.
I think I'll add a decal on top of the flammable and healing barrels to make them undeniably distinct.
The elemental system in general felt very low-impact for weapons
If I understand you correctly, you're saying that the various status effects you can apply to enemies aren't very impactful. Is that accurate? If so, this is sort of by design at the moment. All the enemies are relatively weak trash mobs, there is no point in using status effects when you can just kill them outright. The miniboss fight is a nice parallel to this since, in my experience, applying Rust and Corrode makes the fight MUCH easier. Not only does it make it easier to keep your distance, you also increase your damage output in the long-run.
The scythe felt very situational, since so much in this game can quite literally blow up on your face.
Understandable, a lot of people get scared of going into close-quarters (and rightfully so). I will mention that you can easily take down the fire Mines with the scythe, one cryo slash will instantly apply Freeze and neutralize the bomb.
I love the imsim-ish touches like how you can get manipulate enemies into attacking each other. It's just a shame most of these interactions are not particularly useful yet.
The infighting wasn't meant to be necessarily useful, it's just a fun thing that can occasionally happen. This is tangentially related but I have plans for a sort of "third party" enemy faction that is hostile not only to you but the rest of the roster, which is a way to a balance the ridiculous strength they'll have. Again, just something that sounds really cool and therefore I want to add it.
Some skill tree nodes look connected, like they're being presented as if there is a set path with prerequisites, but you can just skip to the bottom if you have enough currency.
Good point, I'll remove the vertical connecting lines and make it clearer how each category is independent.
It is nice that you can respec, though if this ends up as a roguelike I assume that will have to be removed.
Why is that? I don't see any inherent issue with respecing during a run. I plan to delegate weapon upgrades to a special workbench that you come across between floors, that way you can't change your build in the middle of a fight, maybe that solves the issue you saw?
I don't like how the primary threats in this game are quick gank kills. I don't know what could be done about that when healing is so easy.
How about enemies that apply something on you that make you unable to heal or make healing hurt you? I could also nerf your healing abilities.
You can manipulate that large laser boss enemy into being stuck doing nothing by making it try to chase you through a gap that's too narrow for it to fit.
Perhaps I can make it so the enemy AI detects when it's stuck and begins blind firing.
Overall I found this a nice game, though quite a bit earlier in development than I had expected from footage.
I get that comment quite a bit, I'm not sure why. Is it because the visuals are relatively polished?