Would love to see a "level select" mode and an "endless" mode after the jam
I think you didn't understood that the entire game is the "endless" mode, so there is no "end", contrary to what you said at the end; that's probably my fault that you didn't understand. For the "level select" one, I would probably have to add procedurally generated obstacles or something similar (because of how the game is implemented), but each level would be terribly repetitive anyway, if you can think of something better to add, then I'll probably will do it
If a player gets some good traction, and then accidentally presses R [...]
I should have implemented an "Are you sure?" thing...
Third, why is just the spacebar the shoot button? Why not have it so the player can use any key on their keyboard (with the exception of Escape and the other keys on the very top row, of course.) to shoot?
It's inefficient to check for, say 30 keys, per frame. What I could have done is to put a menu where you could change that and maybe other keys...
I played this game a good while before I came back to this page and read about the torque controls. These are interesting to experiment with, but (1) really need to be told to the player in the game and (2) eventually also devolve into crafting a set, boring strategy to move forward, and (3) have the same problem as the regular shooting mechanic, turning into a balancing act after a while.
Yes, actually there was going to be a "instructions + story" menu accesible from the main menu, but I didn't firstly because of time, and later because I forgot, but it was going to have the controls listed in there...