I hope I don't come off as harsh (as this is an early demo) but there are (a lot of) things I would like to share. I've only gotten so far as the Xenovore so far but it's been very fun! I don't know how far the demo goes but I'll play it some more when I have time. I very much hope you continue and release the full game! WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
First some good things:
• More metroidvanias (especially on the Gameboy) are always good to me!
• I like the atmosphere and it looks great aesthetically.
• The Xenovore was scary haha o.o and the Escudo looks very cool. The sprites are great.
Next I want to bring up some stuff that could be glitches?
• I can stand inside of doors, which is odd and actually makes it so that if you walk too far forward you can't open it without backing up. Some sort of collision might be needed.
• There is no pause menu or even pausing, though this could just be something that hasn't been implemented yet.
• If you charge a shot and then enter another area, it looks like you no longer have a charge shot, but in fact if you press B again you fire a charged shot.
• Scanning Virtus causes my game to glitch and nearly soft-locked me by display a "Scanned" message repeatedly. I was able to break out by shooting Virtus between the messages thankfully.
• Running into Escudo while it was exploding caused my character to "reset" location a few tiles back.
• You can use Jellite as a platform from below, undermining (what seems like) the intended path of jumping across the two of them.
• Sometimes trying to fall through a gap with two platforms either side causes you to immediately walk onto the other platform instead of falling.
• Reading a log while walking causes your sprite to walk in place while reading.
Finally, I wanted to share my one cent about some of the design choices:
• The shooting mini-game is neat, but it could get tiresome if you have to do it constantly.
• I hate that I can only shoot left and right. However I understand this would obviously interfere with the scanning.
• The scanning range is too short, this could just be a skill issue though.
• Not being able to jump to an area that's the same height as a platform I am able to jump up is strange to me. Visually it makes no sense.
• While this could be tied to the "no pause menu" thing, I'm not so much of a fan of how you can only see the map from a specific machine and the bestiary from the ship.
• I think the save machines should actively indicate you are healing while saving. My first save was at full health so I didn't realize until I intentionally tested it.
• There was a case where a Gloop was up an area that was half a block up and you can't jump and shoot it, my shot always went over it entirely.
• The lack of a charge animation caused me to question if it worked at first. Maybe something like a flashing white outline for charging that then turns into the red flashing for fully charged?
• Beating Virtus (the first boss?) doesn't drop any health which is pretty scary. I had one heart and I was afraid I'd die to some random enemy as I left.
• Warp points that aren't unlocked should be ??? at first, similar to the Depart option on the ship.
