I see, that's too bad.
Thanks for the kind offer, but I'll just take this as an opportunity to play through the game again! (also i dont remember which ones i got silver/gold on already so)
That said, I already share some sentiments of other commenters, so I'd like to share my thoughts on more specific aspects of the game:
- Companions - I find it weird that there's a separate button for shooting. Maybe its a carry over from the Cuphead inspiration. So far, there's almost no situation where you want to stop shooting, so maybe you could add auto-fire/toggle for it? Just to reduce scenarios where players are pressing too many buttons (e.g. charging normal attack, shooting, and gliding at the same time).
- Spear Shot/Special Shot - It feels clunky since it stops your aerial momentum and causes you to fall straight down, more so for Spear Shot with worse endlag. This might be by design but there are situations I forget this and use it while jumping, only to fall into a pit (curse you Fire Dyna Blade). Just sorta disrupts the high action when you have to find a safe place to land before using it.
- Big Bronto Burt (Elfilin) - The laser being solid sometimes blocks smaller projectiles from view. This is also a common problem in some shmups I play so it's understandable. Maybe a bit of transparency could work, or it should be behind the enemy projectiles.
- Big Bronto Burt (Ribbon) - Feels like the damage difference from the other forms is too low for the way higher risk of staying close range in shmup battles.
- Silver Medal Timer - It turns red the moment you hit the displayed time limit, but clearing the stage at that exact time still gives you the medal. I almost quit a boss when I saw it turn red but it still gave me the medal. Inconsistent with the Gold medal, where getting hit the number of times displayed turns the text red and no longer gives you the medal. Small detail but could be fixed.
- Marx Soul - Visibility with the bouncing eyeballs. They flicker white, but are black for most of the time against a dark background, making them harder to aim at and play around. All of Marx' other attacks are very bright and colorful so this stands out.
The bosses do a very good job at teaching you to use new moves. This does make me wonder which ones are beatable without certain upgrades.
My favorite bosses include: Holo Defense API 2.0, Dark Nebula, Galactic Nova, Galacta Knight, Shadow Kirby, and Magolor. Shoutouts to Dark Matter's Revenge for being really fun and well designed but its one of those "glad its over, never doing this again" type of bosses (imma have to do it again for medals anyway)
Overall, a solid game so far and can't wait to see it completed! There's already so much content in this demo, it could already be treated as a full game in and of itself.
