itch.io

I like the concept of having a weapon that changes as you progress through the game.  That kept the game varied as I played through it. I like that there was a slight difference in weapon function based on the charge level. I think that the difficulty of the game stems from the weapon being unreliable, and if it were improved, the enemies can become more manageable. 

The level one weapon feels fine as it is because it is just a hilt being thrown, which justifies how limited it feels.

I like that the scattershot allows for controlling the amount of shots fired for charge levels 1-5, and a single charged shot for charge levels 6 -11. This would allow the weapon to be good where crowd control was required vs. focusing on a single enemy. However:

1. charging the weapon was difficult. It would be an improvement if it were a hold-to-charge mechanic instead or reduce the number of levels from 1-11 to 1-4 (1-2 is scatter shot, 3-4 is the charged shot).
   
2. the charge level 1-5 spread of the shots were consistently wide. 
   1. There were times where the spread would leave a gap in the middle of the spray, essentially causing me to miss the enemy. The stray shots would then hit other enemies.  In order to get the full benefit, I would need to be at near point-blank range so that I hit the intended target and avoid drawing aggro from the wrong enemy. 
   2. A useful feature of this level range is that the shots didn't aggro on near-misses. 
   3. An improvement for this level range would be to reduce the spread for multishots, and for a "single" level 1 shot travel in the exact direction that it was aimed at.
3. the charge level 6-11 shots didn't feel beneficial at intermediate charge levels. 
   1. It felt useful when picking off individual enemies. It was a nice trade-off to have more power in the shot and to focus on one target .
   2. Only level 11 felt consistent enough to be worth using. Sometimes a charge level 6-10 would 1 hit-kill an enemy, sometimes it would take 2 shots. As such, I would default to charging to a level 11 shot as it would consistently 1-hit kill non-demon enemies. 
   3. Similar to charge level 1-5, the spread of the shots would occasionally result in shots going too wide, which would aggro nearby enemies even on near misses. 
   4. An improvement would be reduce the number of intermediate charge levels, or have levels 6-10 be at the same power as a level 11 shot and have the level 11 shot have more damage.

As a result, the majority of my strategy for stages 2 and 3 was to charge a level 11 shot, get into the aggro range of one or two enemies, and quickly move to a safer area and kite them as I charged more shots. This made it feel like a slog to get through the levels, and would be frustrating when I die the demons as the shots felt like they did an inconsistent amounts of damage. 

Overall, I like the evolving weapon concept, and it would be interesting to see how it can be refined further.