Amazing demo. Mood, atmosphere, world building and narrative are all top notch. I didn't get to finish a run yet. When the control node got damaged and it needed to be repaired, I didn't know where to find the minerals to fix it. I found them earlier in the run. Unsure where they were stored.. When went to interact with each of the nodes, nothing appeared to happening. You got me hooked though and want to finish to see what's beyond the gate. I enjoyed having waypoints and exploring. It was exciting not knowing what I was going to find.
A couple things I could see improvements on.
Tutorial
I would like more guidance. I didn't quite get the split mechanic yet and probably missed a few more things. I could see a "control panel" on the ship with "tutorial" of current task, what the player to do and reminder of the control would being useful here.
Enemies
Love the art and effects. Attack is simple and the point. One thing could be improved was that they
overlap with each other. Looses it's immersion and "danger" when they are clumped up.
Weapon
Two small nit-picky items.
First is knowing where you shooting. You start the beam and adjust your aim accordingly. Having a cursor or something would be nice.
Second, if you turn on beam, turn off beam, move mouse (say down), and turn on beam again, the beam starts in previous position and moves/rotates to the new one. I don't think that give the intended effect of the weapon, I would expect it to be snappy and powerful. It makes it feely sluggish by needing to "wait" for the beam to point to where I want. Adds an unneeded delay. The worst case would be a full 180 by, for example, aiming on right and quickly switching over to the left. I have to wait for the weapon to get there.
Once it hits the target, it's very satisfying.
Sound Fx are really good for everything and can't wait to see more. Great Job!