Thanks! Glad you liked it. Really happy you found the attack patterns fun. I don’t usually spend so much time on a single boss fight, but since this game was just 1 fight, I had a lot of fun making the attack patterns more intricate.
I totally hear you on the grading system. When I watched my friends play it on discord pre-launch, I could hear the anxiety ramping up in their voices when they’d be close to no-damaging an attack, only to get hit at the end. The grades here were kind of an ‘engagement stop-gap’ to give players something to strive for during the practice phase, but if I ever return to this concept, I think I’ll have a more free-form practice mode (a ‘playground’ like you describe). Or maybe I’d do something like the player has to demonstrate a certain level of mastery before proceeding, but they get as many tries as they want.
Music is something that’s been on my ‘list of things to improve’ for a bit. I’ve been doing “seasonal themes” this year, so my fall season theme was “drawing”. I might do “winter of music” or something to give myself a reason to do some music exploration. I’m still happy with the OST, but I do feel like I’ve fallen into a bit of a formula. I’ll check out chiptune.app, I’m definitely in the market for new musical inspirations. I’ve been listening to a ton of jazz fusion recently, so I might try experimenting with that a little.
Thanks a ton for playing and for the comment. I think I always say this but I’m always really happy to get a notification from you.