Nicely done! After getting the hang of it, I didn't even need the X option, I was able to just swoop back and forth along the bottom and stutter at the right times.

I would enjoy a steeper difficulty curve - after about 12 levels, it wasn't getting noticeably harder - it seemed like the iris was moving around but not shrinking. After that point the game froze right before an iris transition.

I thought it was really smart and fun, I really liked it! :)

Nice! A nice twist on bullet hell and good use of the theme. Would love to see some more variation in the enemies as you move on, but appreciate the time constraints of Ludum Dare, and I think what you've got works really well.

Great work!

Wow, this is a hard game - I can't even get past the second wave. Nice graphics and sound, smooth gameplay, and it fits the theme. Makes me want to keep trying!

well done bullet hell game!

Creepy/discordant music makes it sound cool and alien. Flat color aesthetic makes it look like a modern art painting or something. The way the turrets stack is really interesting and the number of them is daunting but also manageable. I like the recharging health, but you can kind of exploit it by leaving 1 turret alive while you recharge. The flow of attacking then dodging is pretty addictive for a long time even though the gameplay doesn't really change.

@foolmoron I noticed that exploit yesterday, myself. I probably should have gone with kill-based health regen instead of time-based. Maybe I'll fix that if I put out an update.

Clever idea! I really liked all the polish in it esp since its a jam game! The little bounce when you hit an enemy, 10/10 on the feel good scale :) Had fun playing! Good job :D

Nice idea ! felt challenging and stressful at times.
It was a good little play and surely will want to challenge it more :)
Well done

The core shoot-em-up mechanic was well implemented, and the controls were smooth, which made it fun to play. The only improvement which occurs to me is to implement more varied enemies perhaps?

What an intense game! Very fun to play. I kind of wished the space would collapse on me more quickly (just to fit the theme more explicitly), though I was on the edge of my seat the whole time already.

The general game feel is pretty nice; like others have mentioned the X dash doesn't seem particularly helpful since half the time it just put me inside an active laser. The strategy I ended up using was hugging the bottom wall and moving left/right whenever a laser or bullet was about to hit me. Got me pretty far, until the general repetition of the gameplay made me too tired to respond quickly.

I don't know if the design of the game predicted that strategy, but it's the only one that seemed to work, just because I could only shoot upwards and the bottom row is the only place nothing seemed to spawn. Maybe making this a dual-stick shooter (WASD to move, arrow keys to shoot like in Binding of Isaac maybe?) would have helped: it'd let you place enemies on the bottom row and force the player to move around in 2 dimensions and actually dodge attacks rather than scoot left and right.

What was a little annoying is that the health regenerated over time, but did not regenerate between levels. So if I was low on health, the best strategy was to leave one enemy alive and dodge their attacks for a full minute or two to get my health back. I would have liked my HP to return to full on the start of each level so I didn't have to wait.

The music isn't bad, though it did get a little grating at times. It's not that I mind atonal stuff, but lively atonal stuff gets tiring quickly.

I enjoyed this game, and though I did get tired of it I would not be opposed to playing it again, or an expanded version. Nice work.

Thanks for the suggestions @amras0000. I did realize that hugging the bottom wall was the optimal strategy (and yeah, nothing spawns near the bottom), but hadn't really thought about that as a negative before. But you're right, it's weird to have 2-dimensional movement and then discourage using it. Now I'm thinking adding some "L"-shaped lasers might be a good encouragement for players to use the y-axis, without fundamentally changing the game.

Your other points are valid, too, and I think I have some solutions to some of them. I'm definitely thinking about an improved version — I've got too many ideas to ignore them at this point. And you've given me some more things to think on. I appreciate it!

Extremely polished - wow.

The music was a little TOO creepy... I don't think it fits the game, now that I think more about it. But that's purely opinion, so take it with a grain of salt.

After 10 seconds, I was like "How do you survive this?" Then after 1 restart I was able to make it to the second wave, so that was surprising.

The lasers added a crucial element I would never have thought of -- giving you another reason to move besides just the bullets was really, really smart. It gave the game much more depth.

The graphics and music set a really solid mood for this game.

Classic but well realized concept, with a few nice gameplay ideas. The UI is a big +++.

The music was cool but seemed a little bit off to me.

I would have liked to see the controls in the game. And a first easier level so I we have time to grab on the controls.

But the big issue I had was the legth and repetitivity of the game. I stopped out of boredom after 10 minutes, before the game actually started to be hard. I think if the difficulty would scale quicker it would be way better.

Great game! feels very retro, i liked the graphics, the music and sfx, it is very polished, congrats!

I enjoyed playing your game! The graphics are nice. The laser lines are very deadly ;) I would like some points to be visible while playing, to have a high score to beat. :)