Would love to see some more juicy animations for hitting the enemy ships and blowing them up. Audio would be nice too :)

Also, a progress meter for the levels would be good since it's tough to tell "how much more I need to muscle through" to see the next interesting thing.

I should note that right clicking the game bugs out the controls. Trying to read the text midgame is also quite difficult. All in all a pretty nice game. I liked the artwork and had fun playing the game.

I really like what you have here. Barring the sound (as you mentioned), I think a few simple animations would go far, such as making the player/enemies flash red when taking damage or scrolling/looping the background to give the illusion of movement. I enjoyed the atmosphere set by the tone and graphics. When dying, the text

> "At least your pitiful failure will be forgotten as well"

made me lol.

@ennacirruh You're right, seems like the menu swallows the "key up" event. Well, don't right click, I guess.

The game is good overall but has a few faults. Firstly I found it difficult to read the text while playing. Seocndly the lack of audio detracts from the experience. Having some sound effects would really improve the game. Apart fom these it's a solid entry.

Pretty good shmup you made there! I especially love the fantastic pixelart and animation and the difficulty which feels pretty good (a bit on the easy side maybe, but I like that).
A few touches that would've improved the game would be audio, even just some background atmo would go a long way, as well as a parallaxing background (I was quite confused at first as this is such a standard in shmups ^^).
And as stated above, I also wished for the game to pause during texts appearing. Also, I was just holding down space all the time, might as well just set it to auto-fire. :)
Overall though, this is a really enjoyable game, good job!

The story and the enemy designs really steal the show. Really phenomenal job on both! I mean, the detail on the ships was insane. The game could use a little 'juice', like some bullet impact particles and explosions. Obviously you have to cut things when you're doing compo. The story was simple but fun, the ending screen was great. Nice entry!

Love the graphic, its fun to play, the artstyle blended in really well

I like these kinds of space shooters. The whole thing felt a little slower than I like and overall a little to easy. Other than that I agree with the previous commenters. Overall a good entry as usual!

Fun little shoot em up! I liked the diversity of enemies, as well as their design. It is quite frustrating to not have any sound or feedback when hitting them though. Also the purple bullets at the end were pretty hard to see on the dark background.

It's nice to have a story told while playing! however it's almost impossible to play and read at the same time, so I missed half of it.

This was a nice bullet hell game with good storytelling and great pixelart. I completed it on my first try!

I have 2 suggestions:
- Make the enemy bullets brighter, they were a bit difficult to see against the dark background
- Do not show story during the battles. It's hard to read and pay attention to the game at the same time, and the UI was on the way sometimes.

Also, I read your "No sound as (nearly) always". I just want to say that sound is extremely important in making a game fun to play, so it's worth prioritizing even in a game jam. You can find high quality, free to use sounds on freesound.org (Sorry this seemed like a lecture lol).

Anyway, good entry, hoping to see you again in a future jam!

Great art, good controls, overall very nice entry!

A few thought points that might help if you're looking to improve the game in the future:

- It was hard for me to follow along the story as the text box covered a big portion of the screen. I agree with the general consensus that you should not have story text during the action, or at least have it not cover the gameplay.
- Some bullets are too dark to see in the invasion part with the purple projectiles, which made me feel a bit cheated. If it's a design choice, I can get behind it, but then I suggest making that speciific stage / level a bit less crowded.
- WASD + Space to move and shoot makes everything a bit cramped if you're using two hands, I wish the controls were arrow Keys + Space bar or WASD + Enter / Right Shift / something close to it.

Congratulations on making such a polished, complete experience for the Compo portion!

A really solid base for a shmup, cool story (even if I kept having my pitiful defeats forgotten, grrr!!) and great enemy variation and designs. I did wish there was audio or at least sound effects, and having exploding effects for a shmup is simply a must. But considering this was a Compo, it's amazing what you got done, great job!

Well done! Nice graphics, smooth gameplay, and a story. What more can one want? :)

I had fun playing. My only suggestion would be to add a power up or upgraded weapon to vary the game play some.

@the-neon-shark You're right, at least some effects where the bullets hit would have been possible. Progress meter is a good idea actually, did not think of that. My next Ludum Dare game will have great sound effects and awesome music. Now that I said it, I cannot back out.

Too much text. I am in a middle of the fight, I don't have time to read. I think you should have spend more time polishing dynamics instead of creative writing.

Pretty fun game, and the graphics were quite nice. Maybe there can be a progress bar, and the the background scrolling to give the illusion of movement.

I had fun dodging projectiles. A bit hard to follow the story, graphics are cool. Some upgrades to your spaceship, even if just a different kind of projectile would be nice. Also some better sense of the fact that you're actually progressing somewhere, going deeper and deeper. Still, good job, keep going! :)

Nice shooter! Quite a few enemy types with different behaviours. Some things could be improved. Enemy movement patterns could be more interesting. As it is, they tend to clump together a lot. While the graphics are nice, some of the colours are way too dark. I think a shooter really needs good explosions. The story has added value, but having the texts come up during the game action makes them hard to read.