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I tried the demo, that's a very interesting concept and I liked it a lot. I can easily see this game in some speedrun competition. I was not able to find any of the disks (except one) in the two playable levels. Here are some suggestions from my side:

• I would add the controller d-pad to navigate between menu options
• When selecting "Play" in the main menu, I would start immediately with the tutorial before giving the player the possibility to select the stage
• Sometimes when jumping towards the top edge of a wall, as a platformer player I would expect some sort of "automatic climb" from the character, but instead he held on to it and it broke a bit my flow
• See the platforms on the "other reality" with the red/blue wireframed sprites is a nice touch, but I would love to be more precise because sometimes platforms and walls appear even if they were not visible on the other reality. Also, being a little color blind I struggled to see the wireframes sometimes... might I suggest to increase their thickness or add some sort of glow around them?

Keep up the good work!

I liked it, the loop is pretty good but still needs some tweaks in my opinion:

• I'm not convinced on limited ammo, especially if the recharge is very slow and the pace requires quick reflexes: it ruins a bit the fun and leads to frustration in the end
• Shift/RMB to boost: the fact that the spaceship follows the mouse cursor and not the direction I'm moving to with WASD is a bit counter-intuitive, I think it would be better if it follows the WASD input
• Some enemies and their projectiles are ridiculously small, sometimes I struggled to see them at all and I was inevitably hit: I don't know if you have already decided the art style of the game, but I would suggest to increase their sizes and maybe add some glow/contour around them
• Also: player hurtbox feels a bit too big sometimes

I hope I wasn't too harsh, that's just my opinion after a 15 minutes play. The upgrades are cool and well thought and the waves seem to have good economy balance. Keep up the good work!

PS: in the tutorial there is no way to know how many "gold" you have for your upgrades, might I suggest to add it?

Oh okay, now that you explained to me the other actions make a lot more sense! For that matter, I once befriended a foe without knowing why, just outside Calming Tears, and I thought it was scripted but now I understand that I did the right action by chance. I will maybe replay it with that knowledge you gave me.

That's ok for the easy enemies in the beginning, totally understand it.

If you really wanna keep the cone of action you could make it a transparent area instead of an outlined one as it is now. Or, if I may suggest again one way to remove it totally, you could make the shock action sprite/animation to be in that cone area in front of the player (also the area of effect of the shock was not very clear to me in the demo).

PS: I approve the toggleable key for actions too!

Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad you liked it!

Difficulty balance is the part I fear the most, for good reasons. I think it's easy too, but from the dev point of view is always tricky to tweak that, but I have some plans on how to do that. There were only two "floors" of the game in this demo, the idea is to increase number and type of enemies when advancing. Hopefully I will do that well :D

For the environment yeah, it's very bare-bones now. I'm thinking of adding a lot more detail, for graphical flavor, but also refine the room layouts and add some obstacles!

Thanks again for playing it!

Funny game and good atmosphere! My only suggestions would only be

• Make the cursor sprite a bit more visible (increase size and/or brightness)
• The "invisible" enemy that appears and runs towards you sometimes spawns on the edge of the screen and it's not very noticeable until it's already on you

Hey I tried your demo, I played it with mouse&keyboard... pretty cool, it has some potential and the aesthetic is very nice! I'll add now some personal notes:

• In the "Options" menu when I select a checkbox and change its value I cannot see if the tick is there or not because it's white-on-white
• I would add a bit more contrast between navigable map and black non-navigable "void", sometimes there's no distinction between them and I get kinda confused
• The fact that you have a "health bar" on your body is very cool, I would add more states to that (so for example the more the damage you take, the more the cracks appearing on the body)
• I would add directional arrows on the sprite for "Aim" icon (when pressing Action key) while in Keyboard mode: in the beginning it confused me and I thought it was WASD
• The combat is good but I'm not a big fan of keeping spacebar pressed when you need to perform an action: I could see this game work anyways even with a simple "twin stick shooter" approach, so maybe you can try removing the spacebar action and let the player perform the action immediately, also by adding a mouse cursor and see if it works! Also the "cone of action" that appears when pressing spacebar is futile in my opinion
• I did not understand very well the purpose of "shout" and "shock" actions
• I would add some variety to the sprites of creatures that are enemies and friend (I see they have some kind of "icon" on their heads but maybe some variety also in their sprite would improve readibility)
• Enemies are very simple and "cheesable", I would add some more variety and unpredictability to their behavior
• Possible bug: music when changing between Dead Clearing and Calming Tears isn't always triggered

Hope it was useful in some ways. Keep up the good work!

Thanks a lot for the feedback! I'm glad you liked it :)

For the flipped textures: if you mean the placeholder ones (various gates, vending/evolving/fusing machines) that's totally normal, if you men other that I maybe forgot please tell me more!

For the bosses I understand completely what you mean: in my recent playtests I had the same feeling so I'll definitely tweak some attack parameters and play with HP (it felt too long sometimes, not fun).

Thank you so much, glad you liked it!

Hey there unfortunately there are no plans to expand the game at the moment. I'm currently working on a new game for PC right now. Anyways thanks a lot, I'm glad you liked it!

Hey, thanks a lot for all the comments, your support and kind words are so appreciated!

I'm sorry though I won't make updates to the game since I'm working on something else at the moment, I consider the project over by now.

And... who knows about the ??? mistery! Maybe if future games are made we'll all learn more!

Wow, thanks so much for your kind words, glad you liked it!

Humbled for your very kind words. Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Thanks for the feedback, so glad you enjoyed it! Make sure to share the video as long as it's out. Cheers!

Wow, great score on the Endless, it's meant to be the most difficult mode so... congrats! And thanks a lot for the feedback, I'm glad you liked the game!

Hi Jordan, thanks for playing it, I'm glad you liked it and so humbled by your kind words!

I also enjoyed your video, I must say you played very good even some trickiest levels!

Thanks again, truly.

That's a very interesting consideration, and actually one of the main concerns during the design of the game.

During development I changed and tweaked countless times the levels and the endless mode to address this problem in the best way. Turns out it is however there for the "long term", it was a risk I wanted to take.

Personally I'm concerned too, but at the same time I'm intrigued on how the design "principles" for this console will evolve, and can't wait to see what people (and myself if I will do another game for Playdate) have in store.

Thanks a lot for your comment and for the feedback!

Thanks Jackie, I'm happy you're having a good time!

Hi Brent! Try to use the crank to proceed. Cheers!

I'm happy that you're having a good time, thanks for the comment! Also good tip, fortunately the hatch closes just in time... ;)