I am not used to games where you control ships, I played enough to try to see all the content but not enough to get all the small details, so take my feedback with a grain of salt
now to some bullet points
- the movement is a bit hard to control, it would be hard to react to bullets but in this case just like ship battles the issue wouldn't be dodging but having the best positioning to have the upper hand, that being said the controls are a bit hard to get quickly and feel a bit heavy
- bosses are simple and easy, by getting in the enemy pirate ship I quickly defeated it, and since damage doesn't carry over, death is almost impossible to achieve.
- to prevent the player from getting inside a boss and shooting, knockback could be implemented on collision
- I imagine the gold you get from one of the bosses would be used to upgrade the ship, some of the upgrades I would suggest implementing are front cannons and
increasing the number of side cannons. - having seen the ancient pirate I must say the experience was not too pleasant, as aiming at such a small hitbox to be a bit too frustrating, having the cannonballs explode at the place you select with the cursor when shooting at land could help with thing. But giving him a second phase after destroying the cannons was a smart idea.
- extra cannons on the sides would feel better if they shot parallel to one another but at the same place when you get an extra cannon it feels like it shoots wherever
- a clearer indicator of where the helm is pointing and actual speed would be nicer, I got both after a bit but they can be even clearer.
- having the speed indicator next to the helm would also facilitate ui readability.
- a button to quickly reset the ship to 0 speed and direction would be nice, doesn't need to be instantaneous as it probably wouldn't fit in the game, but having those happen gradually but fast would be good
- instead of a lot of small quick tentacle attacks on the kracken (found them to be too constant to reliable dodge, and while the ship movement is more suited to a battle of positioning its not too suited to dodge small bumps on the road) perhaps a big slow powerful one would be more readable and dodge able
the game and the theme are cool, sound efx are good, i enjoyed it!