I saw this on the stream, but I now got my hands on it too. As I mentioned on the stream, I'm really impressed by the technical aspect of the background and other parts of the audiovisuals, and it seems you were mostly trying to challenge yourselves in this area when doing the game.
The main problem I have is that the visuals and audio distract from the gameplay instead of reinforcing it.
For example, it's really hard to tell that you've been hit, to the point that the first gameover came as a surprise; visually the hue of the spaceship changes—which is a nice touch!—but this alone is hard to notice with everything else going on, and the particles look a lot like the particles for defeating enemies; in terms of audio I think it's the same sound as for hitting enemies—which is really juicy and nice—possibly at a different volume?
Some other thoughts on the audiovisuals;
- The particle effects on destroying enemies are really cool. The sound effects of hitting enemies are very satisfying. Overall it feels great to destroy the enemies.
- The trail following the player is a bit too shiny? And it looks weird when the player is static.
- A mixture of the background and other things being so visible makes the enemies quite hard to see. Adding trails to the enemies like that of the player might've helped with this, though there's other solutions.
- The background is... it is too highly contrasting and changes too fast, all in all it makes it seizure inducing. By the way, thanks so much for the warning. It's unfortunate in this page it'll be buried in the comments. Possibly adding the warning to the title screen might've been the best option? Reducing the speed at which it changes could've still given a chaotic feeling, making the speed related to the player's movement would've felt really cool, or lowering the contrast could've made the fast changing speed much more bearable to the eyes, made it easier to see what's going on in the foreground, and still give the chaotic feeling.
- The music is nice!. but weirdly it is too calm considering it as the "background" of the audio part with how chaotic the background of the visual part is.
Once again, I'd like to say I'm really impressed with the technical aspects of all of this, it's amazing given the short amount of time there was for this jam, and it I remember correctly there were two of you? I think it's actually harder to cooperate than to do things on your own, especially given the short amount of time; there's great teamwork, it didn't feel like the game had conflicted visions.
In terms of gameplay, I like the ramp up in enemies, it does make it feel more chaotic as time goes by. It's fairly standard for a twin-stick shooter, but there's nothing wrong with going with tried and tested formulas if your focus is a different aspect of the game.
Great work!