Rough, but Promising

Really nice animation, very avant garde and challenging. Some of the scribbly bits I didn't care for, but most of the piece (and I mean like 97%) was really excellent work. Need to work on your audio alignment, as the music ended for me just as we reached "Extreme Happiness" which was a shame, because some of the best stuff happened after that. I liked your titles. Very fresh. Good use of colour too.

FINISH IT!!!! PLEASE!!!!

all of a sudden I'm looking off at the sky listening to these two people rambling..

Oh, and see if you can boost the sound a little.. Jeremy is a little hard to hear.

wow! look! (-c)locks with style!

that was neefty. Wow.. I actually enjoyed that. I usually don't enjoy clock-crew-type things.. because they're so guttery or stupid.. but this was was kinda neat. I liked the music.

Though I did expect the gun shop guy to start going on a rampage.

Very nice, loving the new 1.8 compatibility..

I think the underside of the head texture may be backwards tho.

A serious review

I'm not going to be one of those reviewers who gives 10s across the board, nor am I going to be one who gives all 0's. I'm gonna try and give you an honest review.

First off, I liked it! I was very impressed by the trails, and by the homing missiles. They wy they work is awesome.

From a gameplay perspective, here are a few observations.

While I realize difficulty was not an original factor, I would like to make the following suggestions. The ships from the first wave should be killable with single shots from the smallest weapon, the second wave should require double shots, etc. Working on up. A missile (single) ought to be worth a quantifyable amount of damage, like let's say 5 cannon shots. So by fifth level, the cannon should only be useful in an emergency. On the very first level I had to use missiles in pairs to destroy the very first enemies. I took to never bothering to hit [A]

Secondly, I'd suggest that the ship (while stationary) should have a faster turn. While it's moving, graceful arcs are appropriate.. but instinctively, when I miss someone, I want to jump off the thruster and spin around quick to get them.

Thirdly.. This is most likely just a Flash-engine issue.. but even on the first level, there was noticeable slowdown. SO MUCH is going on on the screen that my ship was doing about half speed. As soon as I cleared up the level, enemy missiles sped up, and so did I. It was challenging to adjust to, but something I'm sure you didn't intend.

Graphics wise. I only got to level 3 before breakfast... so I didn't see many enemies.. but what I did see bears thie following out. Sprite games like this really live or die by consistent image quality. A classic example is the Asteroids clone, "Maelstrom". I realize this was more of a feat of game concept design rather than graphic design.. but some of the graphics pale in comparison to some of the others. Badguys 1 and 3 are super pretty, The player's ship is... frankly, dull looking, as is enemy number two. The trails and effects are awesome, but when the cool effects are coming out of a toy rocket, fighting a greenish blob thing.. well.. it loses something.

All of that said.. the gameplay is still great. If you could find a way to lower the lag, that'd rock. More consistent sprites would help it a lot too.. as would re-valuing the cannon... but still, it's a fun game and I'm quite impressed.