Thanks for the feedback, I definitely tweaked the timing on the final screen to be a little comedic :D
There is a lot to improve in the bullets for sure, I have not figured out yet how to do compensation for the velocity so the movement adds velocity to the bullets that are spawned (You could also take advantage of this to increase the firing rate of your ship by moving upwards strategically). I may need to re-write the bullet spawner entirely to be more flexible and more optimized. For the jam I threw it together within a week and had to move on to the other aspects of the game. I noticed in Rotschwert the enemies will start shooting after they sit still, and that was something I explored but the way I coded the spawner didn’t enable it to work in its current form.
The hitbox is definitely huge in the large mode, and could have been telegraphed a little better perhaps with a different colour on the central flower which is the true hitbox. And when in small mode, it is just the sphere.
I think the inertia you are feeling might stem from the framerate or lag issues, as I did not code in any inertia to the movement (unless you are extremely highly attuned from your schmup playing experience!). Did you try out the graphics settings in the options and see if the lowest setting might help out? Graphical fidelity and improving performance in all types of hardware is still an ongoing learning for me in using Unreal Engine 5. For sure this type of game is not something I want people to need a beast of a PC to run. The file size is also something I have to work on, I think I can get it down to half the size by re-packaging it without the additional unused assets.
I’m glad for the feedback. I find it hard to get to know people who are open to giving very detailed feedback and to teach others, such as yourself. Would love to connect with you on Discord to talk more!