MECH PUNK

This game made a strong impression on me so I wanted to share some criticism. First off though, I was enchanted the moment I booted this up. This developer seems to really enjoy controlled chaos as a medium and the visuals, sound design and gameplay all embrace this. There is such a unique and beautiful visual aesthetic at work within this game and I love how uncompromising the developer is with their vision. Music will change speed when entering and exiting menus, space warps like you're flying outside a skybox, and the cockpit view is wonky yet engrossing. Its dizzying at first to control or even understand. But starts to click after a little while. There is technically an intro/tutorial but I still wasn't really prepared to fight enemies after it. I died several times before managing to get enough guns to fight back properly. It was a bit hard to tell at first who was an enemy and who was a civilian given everyone's alien appearance The player feedback is a bit lacking, getting hit doesn't produce a strong enough visual or audio cue to let the player know their losing health. Likewise, hitting an enemy shows them flashing to indicate damage which is not immediately clear given the other visual noise. Its also not really very satisfying to kill enemies as they kind of just disappear. I feel the developer struggled with these elements in Golden Light as well, but it was overall easier to read what was going on in that game due to the (relatively) more structured environments. The game is also lacking in meaningful downtime. Whether it be interacting with NPCs or exploring the environments, you see all there is to see after about 2 or 3 minutes on a planetoid. The different planetoids have different themes and NPCs from each other but feel a bit more like a palette swap with little more to discover. I would love to visit worlds that encourage you to explore slowly and take in some more varied sights and sounds to contrast the chaotic mech battles. Whenever I did start to become entranced with the world, some enemy would start blasting me from off screen taking my attention away from it. I understand that plot-wise, all the planetoids are constantly under assault, but I think it could help the game's pacing a bit to tone it down a bit and give the player room to breathe. What did I think of the bullet hell gameplay? It feels chaotic and exciting at first, but started to feel relatively stale when I realised the key to winning every wave is just to keep dashing around the enemy. Despite enemies behaving slightly differently from each other, my one dashing strategy always worked. I would love to see enemies that push me to switch up strategies on the go. I also stopped paying attention to which guns I had equipped early on as they all just seemed to make me generally stronger and require no real strategy in application as far as I can tell. I recommend this game to anyone who wants to see a fresh take on world design as well as game design in general. But keep in mind that as a game to be played it lacks dynamics and could use a lot more care and attention in regards to some of the area mentioned above.