Lots of cute art, but the UI's art style is all over the place, and it's what's grabbing my attention the most.
- Escape menu has a very smooth sci-fi look (looks great, just doesn't look like anything else)
- Loading screen + all the character art is another style
- Main menu has a "modern indie game" look for its buttons
- Detention has clean pixel art for the rooms and characters
- Sortie screen has a kinda "Unity game" look to it.
- The mission complete screen uses a pixel font that I don't think is used anywhere else?
While having multiple styles in the same game isn't necessarily bad (and to be honest, there are very pragmatic reasons to do so), it really should be kept to 2, maybe 3, and they should all be internally consistent with each other. While I'm not a huge fan of what to me feels like clashing styles, the Celeste artist wrote a good article on the subject that I think is worth considering.
Other notes
- I love the main menu scrolling around the base.
- Ability to rebind controls would be nice, though I assume is planned since there's a space for it in the escape menu. I prefer to play a shmup with arrow keys and Z/X/C.
- The actual in-stage gameplay/graphics is pretty good!
- The (starter?) character is faster and twitchier than I was expecting. She feels like the speedier version of the main character.
- In the cutscene with the big wooden platform, they started shooting and I got hurt before the camera scrolled back. Might have had something to do with my having paused in the middle of it?
- If there are multiple weapons, having a faster way to get to them versus cycling between them might be useful.
- The hitbox was kinda confusing when your "stand" is out. My brain knows it didn't change, but when I have to make intuitive split second dodges, it confused me.
- I liked purple green boss a lot.
- I never got any points to unlock stuff on the database (maybe I missed something) but I think that's a fun idea and love "codexes" like that. Making it unlockable also gives a fun meta-progression to the game.