This little game is pretty fantastic! I definitely think that a sound upgrade is in order, but the controls and gameplay are on point, and the pixel art rules.

Woah - the production value is crazy - excellent art and props to you for having multiplayer! Controls w/ mouse and keyboard were defnitely tough, I wish I had a controller around to get the full feeling of it.

This is awesome, I started cracking up when i saw "hawian shirt guy" 5/5 for humor

This control scheme is kind of maddening, but it's pretty fun once you get used to it. Love Hawaiian shirt guy. Good job everyone!

The graphics and sound design for this are great! I didn't end up managing to finish the first level (assuming there is an end right now?); it felt a bit too long and difficult, at least without checkpoints. Once you got used to the control scheme though, the gameplay was pretty fun!

(edit: site accidentally published my comment twice and can't delete it, so please ignore this one!)

I really like the game, it has a fun story with some nice dialogue that just seems to fit perfectly. The music and pew pews are nice! And the graphics are super arcadey and I love it!

The only thing I can complain about is the ship controls, it's fun and different but makes the game really hard to have to turn around like that while tons of projectiles are flying around.

But! I really enjoyed it and made it a decently far and would definitely pick this up on mobile or computer!

If the controls are intended as they are its a very hard game hahahaha. Are you sure you didnt forget the deltaTime? Anyways, insanely well made graphics and style for 3 days! Love the art and the soundtrack!

@auburgo thanks for the feedback :) You're absolutely right, it is too hard for a single player.Unfortunately we ran out of time and just kind of released what we thought would be good for 2 players.

A new version is going to be uploaded soon with dynamic difficulty balancing and other stuff!

The controls definitly were unique/innovative. The controls (q/w a/s) did not make the game difficult per se, but the the size of the visible screen made projectiles/mines impact too fast in comparison to the reaction window and turning radius of the player. I really liked this new side-scrolling approach and see some potential in the new control imperative. Definitly stick with these thruster controls for this game.

cool art style, felt a bit like QWOP in space XD

I'm in the QWOP in space boat, I couldn't get past the first level in single player but there are a lot of good ideas here with great execution despite the impossible difficulty of single player. I'm a sucker for space games so I knew I was going to like it before I played, and you bonus points for trying something new and making it work.

very hard but fun, great visuals and sound

I loved it <3 you should definitely play wing commander privateer. Also lots of love to the artist

This was pretty fun, really liked the movement! It was challenging yet doable ^^

The game looks very interesting could you add an WebGl version of it? It would probably attract more players to try it out :)

Those controls had my brain scrambled for the first playthrough, but 2nd time round it kinda 'clicked' and suddenly I could aim and fly fine! Very interesting control setup, was a nice change from typcal WASD. A forgiving amount of health as well, which minimized any frustrations from the controls. Also digging the retro 90s feel. It almost felt like a cross between a super old 80s text game and something Id play in the 90s. So a nice nostalgic feel to it. Not sure about the asteroids mechanic tho, but it did solve the boundaries issue. Nice work!

Yo, your stream earlier was fun. Nice hanging with you and watching you play games!

Dark Star was pretty fun! The dual trigger thrust thing was a little difficult but I got the hang of it. Eventually, I was drifting around the map like freaking a mad man!! The mission briefing dialog was a great intro to the game, felt like i knew exactly what to do without it being shoved down my dang throat! My main gripe is that the dialog with Hawaiian shirt bro was a little too large during game play. I'd recommend coming up with a minimized version of your dialog UI during game so that you don't obscure 40% of the screen. Wasn't a huge deal though, i heavily enjoyed the soundtrack too, definitely a slapper. Nice job!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hey man, i love space game. The charging and story quite cool. But the control was quite punishing for me.

I found it very interesting to use the mechanics of spaceship games to the contrary. I never would have thought of that. It was hard to find the controls and after I found out what the buttons were, it was more like "A delivery" to be able to control the ship. I didn't find any shot buttons. Is this right? I found out that I am a terrible space bodyguard. I liked the art and the "man with pig ears", but what captured me was the Sound. I love FM sounds. I study audio for games and am crazy to learn to work with fm sounds. It reminds me of childhood too.

Congratulations for the game. Big hug to manadream.

Great game. Art and sound was super good and overall it was put together very well. You can tell that a lot of polish went in to this. I did struggle with the unconventional controls but became a bit easier as I got use to it.

Looks pretty :D Funny diologs and good style of music and art. I didn't get the control system. It a bit challenging but i really liked the movement of spaceships. :)

Definitely like the concept, the graphics & sound worked as well. Control scheme was quite trick to get used to since it's so unusual, but it probably works in its own way. Humor was good, and overall, great submission!

Hard game with atypical controls (tested with keyboard and gamepad). Graphics and story are well done. I like the weapon system (light or heavy attack) even if I would like to launch a "medium" attack. Will be interesting to see different type of enemies.

Hello! Your game was played during my stream!

If you want to know the timestamp of when your game was played you can see it in this spreadsheet:
https://tinyurl.com/yau8hjzn

And then look in my latest videos and find your game being play (after the current stream ends)
https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos

Thanks for playing @ursagames! Sorry it was so tough! I'll be uploading a fix tomorrow that should be easier for 1 player. :)

Moving is quite hard but it's a good game.

I saw this game on your stream and was really interested to see the strange control scheme that seemed to work so well on a gamepad. I played the first mission with the "regular" ship, that was fine and controlled well enough but it was not very exciting. I would point out that you should really allow arrow keys + space, which is much more common for keyboard-based shmup games.

You said in the stream that the keyboard controls for the second ship were kind of meh. That's an understatement! WASD arranged in that pattern is extremely painful. I would really like to see how this would work with e.g. Q/A for the left thruster and O/L for the right thruster (the upper key accelerates, the lower key goes backwards), plus space for shooting. I feel that would map much more closely to the gamepad control scheme.

Anyway, apart from the controls, the music was great, the art is nice, although I much prefer when pixels actually line up and aren't just used as vector art. I would expect the game difficulty in this game to really stem from the control scheme, so it feels really easy when playing with the non-twisty ship. Even so, in many parts of the levels there is just not that much that you *have* to do (e.g. in level 2 there are waves of horizontally moving enemies where you can simply park your ship on top of the client and shoot threats down without moving, since many enemies just don't come near the client).

It was Intense! I liked dialogs and audio.

@aurel300 Thanks for the detailed feedback, its very helpful! What do you mean by this line though: "I much prefer when pixels actually line up and aren’t just used as vector art."?

BTW, your game was my favorite so far from this ldjam! I have literally no criticisms for it, I'm sorry! XD So addictive, pretty, and... excuse the pun... aurelly pleasing. :D

@arity Pixel perfection (or the lack thereof) is a pet peeve of mine, and many people really don't care. Since you used Unity, [here](https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/03/13/2d-pixel-perfect-how-to-set-up-your-unity-project-for-retro-8-bits-games/) is an article that has some good examples. In particular I dislike the look of multiple sprites on screen when their pixel size is different (e.g. in this game the ship and its charge up animation); and when pixels are rotated and you end up with rotated squares rather than actual big, blocky pixels.

And thanks for playing my game :) (I think you get more karma for commenting on other games rather than responding here!)

hawaian tshirt guy!! nice game!