Full Game Review
summary: Pretty neat concept, it's your standard 2D game with a twist. I particularly like the title screen design and the music by Ronald Jenkees.
ratings:
GRAPHICS 8/10, the spaceship you control is cool and the environment looks good
GAMEPLAY 8.5/10, while the idea of stopping time in games isn't new (SUPERHOT was the inspiration, as the dev mentioned on YouTube), there's still enough action going on to keep you entertained, and the game is pleasantly difficult, meaning you can't just go straight through levels, but it's never too hard that it gets frustrating. As you go, the difficulty increases linearly and you always feel it. The simplicity of the mechanics is also remarkable.
CONTROLS 7.5/10, I did feel the controls were a bit wonky; I found the rotation a bit too fast and the movement a bit too slippery; it lacks the snappy feel a great 2D game usually has, but makes up for it in other categories.
SOUND 8/10, as I said in the summary the music is great, however the sound effects are a bit simple and lack amplitude. I'm just nitpicking here though.
PLAYTIME 9/10, the game delivers about as many levels as expected (40); not too long, not too short, just enough to fully enjoy the experience of a 2D equivalent of SUPERHOT.
STORY 5/10, the premise of the game is that you're on a mission to broadcast (great!) music to opressed citizens (which are represented visually by cute astronauts on the margins of the levels), but I feel that the story definitely could've been developed a lot further. Did this game need a story? Obviously not, but since it has a few words written out, I wish it was either completely gone or fully fledged!
bugs: This game also has a few bugs, but I don't know whether the dev will fix it, considering how old it is. Regardless, here's the problems I found
1. In the console which opens up when double-clicking the executable on Windows, the following error appears (the game was made with Godot, running on OpenGL ES 3):
ERROR: texture_set_size_override: Condition ' p_width <= 0 || p_width > 16384 ' is true.
At: drivers/gles3/rasterizer_storage_gles3.cpp:1040
This isn't a "bug" per se, however, since it doesn't affect anything and it might not even relate to the game itself, since it comes from one of the driver's C++ files.
2. Resolution scaling isn't ideal on Full HD, however the game looks just fine on 1650x1050. The fact that it runs on fullscreen by default and it's not toggleable (at least as far as I know) may be a problem for some people, though.
3. If at any point throughout the levels you press ESC to get back to the main title, the cursor disappears and you can't select the buttons with your keyboard.
That's about it, thanks for reading my review!