This game has broken gamedesign as most shutemups in "oldschool hardcore" style. "Hardcorness" was used to increase playtime with no-cost of development and content filling. Yes, there are 0.01% people absolutelly love this, but I am not one of them. You can call me "casual player", despite the fact that I am played a lot of games from 95's and developing from 2000's.
1. "Continue button". This brokes game absolutelly. Just click "continue" to beat the game. Very close to "win the game" button at start menu, why not?
2. Absolutelly broken learning curve. You must to retry first stage 10000000 times before you will finally have it written into your subconscious how to play this game. Because, 95% people will lose all health (not game over, "continue button") at the first stage. At the second - you get 10 times more bullets to react.
This is kind of game with "no brain automatic behaviour", just repeat 100..00 times, before your brain will automate the moves. This can be ok, but
3. Repetative gameplay. You will get same game states over and over and over again, just for "muscle memory", without any changes. This is why "roguelikes" are so good, they give you infinite game situations on repeating stages. But in this game you need to play absolutelly same game stages just to memorize all enemies, patterns and so on. This just like a puzzle, when you need to make correct moves all time the game along.
Dev adds randomizer to enemy patterns, but I didnt notice that. But Im sure you will see all the enemies and patterns with the first time game "continued" to end.
4. Hold LMB to fire. WHY? Player 100% of time want character shooting continuously, why need to hold LMB ALL THE TIME? No, you just hold the button all the time without any sense. May be, it has sense with other weapon type, but I didnt reach them.
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Game art, UI - all good. Sound, music - also good. I like idea to controll the character with mouse and ability, when you can turn you character into projectile that elimminate enemies and make you evade. Also game has good "feeling" and visually style. But because of game design mistakes done - I cant play it more, than 10 minutes (just to skip to end with continue button), but I really love bullethell games and scroll shooters.
Game has really good gameplay core base, sad about all this gamedesign mistakes was maden. They are wasnt be mistakes, if the game was on arcade machine in 90's, but now is 2k.