Hi! I'm still catching up on demo day stuff but I wanted to reply to this feedback and clarify things for posterity!
Credits are indirectly tied to shields- if you pick up additional fuel that you can't carry, you receive credits instead. To prevent permanent invincibility, gems aren't used to power the shield directly. The green fuel bars also represent how much boost (or cloak) you can use, so there is a tradeoff between moving quickly and playing defensively.
Going back and replaying missions that you've finished is a feature that is partially implemented. Our plan is to make story missions replayable once you finish a chapter, in the same way boss fights are replayable after they are finished. The cheat code for this is AIRCRACKNGROOFTOPCANTENNA.
The team is in unanimous agreement that there is way too much reading between missions and it screws up the pacing a lot. We'll compress a lot of that text as we get around to it- hasn't been on the prio list, is all.
Visual clarity is an interesting topic for this project in general, and it's something we've been steadily improving on over the last several demo days. Adding F1 to highlight the ship in this build is one of those steps, and we're likely going to be adding some dynamic enemy highlights too (suggested from DD55 feedback, if I recall correctly) - I need to rewrite the highlighter to support that, though.
A lot of our enemy designs in the current build rely on their small size and coloration to blend in with their surroundings, and we've received a lot of mixed feedback on that decision. Part of what we are trying to accomplish with enemy designs is creating believable adversaries that look like they actually belong in their environment, and part of what we're going for involves using bright colors + motion to make enemies visible when they are dangerous.
Other clarity steps we are considering include some changes to gems on screen (automatically fade/hide when enemies or bullets are nearby), some changes to bullet graphics, and adjusting background colors to make certain moving items easier to see.
As for the crash screen, when I saw you arrive at that on your recorded video I was kicking myself for keeping that placeholder mission on map 2. My intent was for players to try out the red-difficulty missions on map 1 after completing the Garbage Worm fight. Those red missions showcase the other biomes available for procedurally generated missions, along with their different music tracks and etc.
Thanks again for the detailed feedback and we'll probably see you guys next demo day \o/