Laboratory Channel

Thank you, Xtra and everyone else, for proving to me that I am once again, not a gamer.

To be fair, most of the critiques about this game, DC already pointed out. Still there are a bit more jank things that I discovered while playing the game:

1. The music bug only seems to happen after boss fights - or at least, that's when I notice it. It never has happened to me when dying on the first stage, but consistently seems to happen on Boss 1 and Boss 2.

2. You can't shoot while holding the left arrow-key. You can shoot while traveling left, yes, but this makes traveling/shooting to the left feel absolutely terrible.

3. If you hit the ceiling/floor of the game and hold up/down respectively, you stop moving. Is this intended? Can be confusing for people who pick it up for the first time (I thought I kept getting stuck on the boss room, but it happens across all rooms).

4. Weird bug that happens in Stage 2. I figured it out! If you hit any flower enemy (the stationary ones) it'll take you straight out to the title screen. Weird!

5. The boss death sound for Boss 1 (as I never beat Boss 2) blows your ear-drums out. It sounds as if someone's mic is continuously peaking. If you can adjust it, it'd be very good.

The rest of this stuff is less essential and more nitpicky (I say after pointing out music stuff in 1):

1. Game can sound a bit empty, but with how fast you can clear enemies having a boom sound every time you kill one could be sensory overload, imo.

2. A help screen. I made it to Boss 2 without missiles, and when I found out that we can switch weapons from the get-go made me unhappy, to say the least.

3. At least say that Space is shoot. It only says start.

4. Once you die, make it so that the player has to press Space to move on to the next life. You can't catch a break in this game.

5. For Boss rooms, I have now noticed that actually, your character doesn't move automatically after the first input. If that's what's intended (full control of the character over the semi-auto scrolling nature of the regular levels), maybe just get rid of that initial momentum in Boss fights. Could work either way, however.

6. Boss 2's seed bomb attack is personally, really unfun. Just even a little bit more space between each seed would make the boss still hard (as it's still shooting at you) but not feel impossible. But maybe I'm just garbo, who knows.

Good, fun game overall, but it gave me cramps. 

Really digging the music in this! Was fun exploring the map trying to figure out where to go. But, I do have to agree with DC11111 though in that this could really benefit by having some sound effects (with a few visuals added as well).

Could use something like https://www.bfxr.net/ to generate some in there to add some oomph. Also, having some visual feedback for hits etc. would be nice. For instance, if you hit an enemy with a rocket you get that "KABOOM!" sound effect playing and have something like an explosion animation that plays over it (for game maker studio you can also use particle effects like so: effect_create_above(ef_explosion, x, y, 2, c_red); put this in the destroy event for the obj). Also, there were times when it was hard to tell how I died in the previous run. Having it maybe freeze on the hit and having something like a quick color flash with a "thud" for walls or a "WHACK" for the planes would be a nice tell (Nothing too long but just a second or two to show what happened).

Also, maybe this is just me but I didn't know how you could fire until after reading through the comment section. 

Aside from those smaller items it was fun to fail and figure out where to go. Congrats on finishing and good work!

Ok, I played through the game, and it's pretty good! The art and music is good, the concept is fun, and I enjoyed playing the game. However, I have a few things that I think could be improved.

1. The music sometimes cuts out if you mash through the title screen after a game over. I have no idea why, but it does eventually come back.

2.  A pause button would be appreciated.

3.  The game doesn't have many sound effects, making the levels very quiet, especially if the music bug described above happens. I like the boss hit sound effect so it'd be great if that could be applied to all the enemies.

4.  When I first started the game, it took me a second to realize that you can damage the bird generators, and that destroying them is how you progress. A page of instructions or story explaining that you need to do this would help alleviate the confusion.

5. Because you die in one hit, a shield powerup of some kind would be a great addition. In fact more powerups than just missile refills would be nice (maybe a temporary spreadshot or something).

6. It gets kind of tiresome mashing space to fire. Could you make it so holding space makes you fire continuously?

7. The second bosses falling seed attack is really hard to dodge due to how floaty the controls are. I'd like it if either that attack was more spaced out, or if it was a bit easier to stop on a dime.

And that's my feedback! Sorry if it comes off a bit complain-y, I just wanted to give you some things you could improve on (also, I'm bad at video games lol). 

Can't wait for the final release!

-Dc