Feedback required on Star Defender - Simple Shoot 'em Up

Hello!
I have just published Star Defender, an incredibly simple Shoot 'em Up style game I made in short time spread across 3 days. It was somewhat inspired by an old unity project I worked on that was slightly more complex.

Star Defender (game link) - Star Defender - Roblox

I’d like some feedback on it, specifically:

  • Game feel
  • Game icon and thumbnail
  • SFX

As the game was made in a very short amount of time, it lacks much complexity, so some ideas I have for future updates that I also would like feedback on:

  • More enemy ship types (more health/score/damage, ones with turrets)
  • Player powerups (shield, friendly fighter, repair)
  • Scoreboard
  • Multiplayer

Thank you!

23/12/22: Based on feedback, I’ve changed the player movement somewhat.
Input is handled differently, more responsive and the player acceleration has been removed, so its more snappy feeling.

controls aren’t as responsive as i feel they should be. it looks like the player builds up speed when moving left-right, so any change in direction requires you to stop first and it’s more difficult than it has to be to line up a shot.

icon looks fine to me. anyone could argue that it could look better, and obviously it can, but regarding the idea of it i wouldn’t say it looks bad.

i think enemies should remain on the screen, and not propel themselves towards the bottom. reason being that eventually the enemies themselves become a projectile like those green lasers; you can position yourself near them to shoot but is it worth the risk of getting shot yourself at point-blank?

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Thanks for the feedback,

Completely agree with the player controller, I’ll work on making it feel more snappy and responsive.

The thing about the enemies staying at the top of the screen is interesting, as your right in that the player lacks reason to go for the enemies close to the bottom. However, I’d rather keep the current enemy flying towards them, maybe another enemy in the future can sit at the top firing rockets or something. That being said, there still needs to be incentive for the player to go for the more risky shots.

  • I was thinking perhaps when enemies die, they have a chance to drop a powerup, which the player has to touch to pick up, only the powerup despawns quickly, so only when they spawn close to the bottom will the player have a chance of obtaining them.
  • Alternatively, I could decide to just live with the flaw, after all, if a player realises a shot is more risky and decides to avoid it, then that should be their decision, maybe just making score more important could help (score leading to progression (boss fight), score leading to powerups)

Again, thanks for taking time to play my game!