So Im going to focus on giving you some feedback regarding gameplay and where to expand. Starting with the User Interface, you should reduce the size of the player's health and maybe put it on the top left corner, alongside other information regarding the player. You can also stylize this eventually, instead of a meter maybe crosses or hearts and so on.
Now for gameplay, you could really do well with making the mouse affect the camera, lets say I point towards a direction, our camera should shift a little bit towards that direction. A quick tutorial I found might not be up to date: Youtube Link, Another Link
This way we allow the user to track the boss and helps with navigation of the obstacles. If this is too difficult, you could make do with making the screen bigger to help with our sight.
This changes let us open up a new door (might not be your exact image but...) Think of bullet hells, since you mentioned the theme of weaving around obstacles and enemies, you can make use of bullet hells patterns to make the player use the surroundings to avoid bullets and maybe also punish the player by predicting this and making the boss do a certain action and so on. Bullet Hell Generator for Godot
Hopefully with this you start to see how you can apply some of these things to improve your game, I understand its your first time with no large prior knowledge so good job on the first hurdle! Things can only go up from here.
Also I did like the art you did, with the cute lil nun, I think if you follow that style and with your boss art design you could make a pretty cute and good game in the future. Its a matter of consistency and learning! You got this!
I love the Nun!
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Thank you for your feedback! I'm really touched to receive such thoughtful and encouraging comments on my first attempt at making a game! Regarding the issue with the health bar, you're right that I haven't optimized the UI well enough. I'll work on improving the display of both the player's health and the boss's health in the next update.
As for the camera... it's true that I wasn't sure how to adjust it on my first try, but the tutorial you provided is really helpful. I'll try to implement some camera movement, and this will definitely be a direction for improvement going forward!
Regarding the bullet hell level design, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the code in the tutorial is actually understandable! This is something I couldn't have imagined a month ago. The bullet-dodging mechanics are really fun, and I originally intended to design obstacles as textures that could be used to dodge boss attacks, but I didn't have enough time to write the code for it. I'll definitely consider this gameplay direction in future designs!
With your encouragement, I truly feel motivated to continue making the game! I'm so glad you like my character, and I really want to finish telling her story! Honestly, typing this out has moved me to tears. Thank you again for your thoughtful feedback!