I give permission to critique Terminus as much as you like.

Terminus review:

Game loop:
Player plays asteroid shooting game, after losing all its health, player now can upgrade their battleship with various upgrades.

Good things:

Graphics - while being minimalist , the graphics of this game is superb at conveying everything player should know, while looking juicy at same time.

Basic idea - asteroids have lot of health but are slower and aren't trying to attack you, while green creatures contain less health and try to actively attack you. There is decent variety in asteroid types, changing your focus to trying to or not trying to destroy asteroids instead of enemies, creating game more challenging. Controlling the battleship also feels very well.

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Now if somebody thinks only graphics and fun gameplay is enough to make game engaging, we'll they're wrong. The main thing what game should have is being fun for longer time. Just try to think of a game which people like and keep talking to while they played it only for few minutes and became bored.

The game needs to be satisfying. Super Mario have variety in levels which keep you wondering what's next, multiplayer games are making players looking forward to fun moments, Minecraft just gives you infinite possibilities. And Terminus, it doesn't really make a satisfying experience. Now of course you would ask why. Here's why:

1. Game is too short. I've been playing game for about 10 minutes, and have bought the strongest upgrades. Of course you don't want to make everything more expensive, that will make the game grindy, and that is of course not the good solution. I'll tell the solution, but we need first to check the whole picture of what's wrong:
   
   
2. There is no challenge unlocking upgrades. Do you know that feeling while playing games when there is some hard to acquire item, and you have to really put effort into getting it. But here there is no such a feeling, everything seems less or more same. You get rank 3 buy new weapon, get the perk, get rank 5 buy primary missions, get rank buy enhanced perk , get rank 12 buy advanced weapon and so on… It's just so linear - check what you can buy, and buy it…
   
   
3. Probably the biggest problem , player doesn't have clear goal. I have played many similar games, and each game the more you played it, it keeps introducing you to new stuff. New level, new enemy, new conditions . As the fact heroic ~ finale did this much better. There is always that feeling, what enemy type I will encounter next, while in Terminus , it just keeps spamming you with more asteroid and enemies (which, by the way, makes gyro torpedos overpowered as it has AoE which works well in this condition). Game just feel arcadish for this reason, and player gets bored quickly.
   
   

Also some minor problems:

• nobody wants to read intro,
  
  
• instead of “scaring player” with your upgrade menu UI at start, just make them play the game first, and then when they see the upgrade menu, it will make much more sense.
  
  
• you can keybind multiple controls to same key
  
  
• it can get laggy on vanilla (I get it, scratch is slow, and it's very impressive it even works as well with those advanced collisions, but maybe think of have dynamic change to low quality mode if game gets too laggy as one of solutions)
  
  
• Some sounds could use variations (like random pitch change, or increase pitch change for coin collecting).
  
  
• Mission summary could be more clear, like for rank some bar which gets increased , and for coins instead of “coins collected” you can just put amount and $ character, it would be much easier to grasp. Anyways you see what is look the best.
  
  
• For upgrades which don't have enough rank to be bought , you could use lock icon, this will make player intrigued what new things will they unlock when they get new rank, and then add animation of newly unlocked upgrades, so player know exactly what they unlocked.
  
  
• You could also use more colors in the upgrade menu, for example for abilities , maybe you could use purple color for ability upgrades , that way player will exactly know that when they see purple thing, that thing could be used as active ability. Just be sure color is indicating what thing is used for , rather than coloring how it would look in real life, just to stand faithful to the style.
  
  
• Health orbs are too generous, I feel like I can live infinitely just with the health I acquired from things. I would make them even x10 less likely to appear.
  

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Finally , the major changes which will improve your game enormously.

EVENTS


Imagine you're playing game, now after 100 seconds of surviving, you realize something.
You have been doing exactly same thing for 100 seconds, shot asteroids and aliens.
In fact you have been doing this thing for so long you now have what to do in reflexes.

But imagine this after first 30 second something strange happens, all over the screen a text is written
“you have entered warzone” and 20 second timer appears. Now you realized there are some new kind
of treat, the blue (or whatever color) ships start firing the green aliens, and you're in middle of crossfire.
Can you survive for 20s? After that 20s , and then again after some time like 40s “Asteroid field” text appears.
“What's this now” you ask, and there are x4 more asteroid and no aliens this time.
There are even some types of asteroid you never seen before.
Then realize there is some kind of bar at the top. It says “111s/200s - ?????” you don't understand what it is,
but you just know you're giving your all to survive for total 200 seconds, and then BOSS APPEARS.

Alien boss, enormous, terrific, so hard it beat it even before you managed to even damage 10% of it.
You're at upgrade menu, and then you tell to yourself "what I can do to beat this boss, what weapon will be useful,
what will make me lose less hp in asteroid field, so I stay healthier for the boss, what should I do.


I hope you enjoyed my story . This is how player should feel. The feel I had after buying new upgrades was -_-. the feeling I had after playing more than 20s into play session was -_-. The game just must have something what will make player look forward to. You don't even need boss if it's too demanding for game of this scope, just implement something unique happen in a while. Unique enemy, a 100% super fast gold asteroid, just something…

UPGRADES

• First limit number of slots you have. Make you have 1 slot at start, then 2 slot at rank 5 ,3 at slot 10 (or whatever feels balanced, you get the point).
  
  
• Make everything cost DIFFERENTLY, don't make each upgrade cost $200, make one cost $200 ,second cost $300 ,some cost even $2000. I can't go in depth how to balance it, but this is the point. When you get unlock everything at some moment, the player will just choose one which feels the best, but now there is choice, “should I wait to buy this expensive upgrade, or buy this cheaper now” , “Will I have enough slots”. Don't be afraid to increase prices of upgrades, just leave some at cheaper cost, and have some which are stronger more expensive. Just give player choices and feel they're unlocking stuff.
  
  
• Some upgrades seems pointless like mission (ranks?) upgrades , solider and veteran. Will choice of +20% more damage to asteroid vs aliens really change player's approach to things? My suggestion is to make them actual missions, break 100 asteroids get rank miner , destroy 1000 get prospector and so on. Have in mind this kind of stats boots will work best with some hardly reachable goal like boss, because 10% damage doesn't make difference when you have strong strategy, but could make difference for boss battle as it is unpredictable. (if there was boss battle of course). I think this will be much better.
  
  
• Some upgrades are OP, like what's deal with "Arrayed" upgrade. Make your damage output 2.5x larger with only $500 ??? ?? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?? ? ???????????? ?? ?? make it cost $10000,. I can't really look into details, but the gyro torpedoes are too op, especially with arrayed, nothing can even come close by, and even if something does by accident, my mines and drones will kill it. Just find the OP stuff, make it weaker, or expensive, or add things in game which will be stronger against such kind of upgrade, like high HP alien which is strong against AoE damage.
  For weak stuff you do opposite, make some stuff which are weaker against , for example laser, make enemies which appear in line. Also I feel there should be more weapons, the existing advanced should be more expensive, and there should be middle class with middle stats.
  
  
• Also speed upgrades maybe should be more useful, maybe make base ship initially slower, so they actually make difference. I feel like I can avoid everything without any speed upgrades.
  

LAST REMARK

• Try to make losing health less forgiving.
  
• Add more interesting aliens with different stats and abilities.
  
• Maybe stronger asteroids.
  
• Maybe zoom out just a little bit.
  
• Think of something which will prevent of player of aimlessly doing same stuff over and over again.
  

THANKS FOR READING

Thank you! These are all great suggestions and I'll get to fixing. In no particular order:

Bosses and Events: I was originally going to add in some bosses, but ran out of time. Events are a great idea and I will try to add them when I have the time.
Upgrades: Balancing is changing soon, hopefully. I am thinking of various nerfs for arrayed and volleying, as many people were complaining about them being OP as well. For gyro and laser, most people have actually been saying that they like laser the most, it works really well with seeking. I will try to balance out the upgrades more.
unlocked slots as you level up sounds like a great idea, however, the way that the different upgrades unlock at different ranks already sort of does this, since nobody wants to buy every single t1 upgrade. I'll think about it.
lock icon and unlock animation sounds great. Do you think players should see what the thing is before unlocking it?
Health: In heroic, people complained so much that health was too unforgiving, so I'll need some time to find a good balance there.
Mission accomplishments sound great! I don't know what I would use for an unlock for explorer and pioneer though. maybe surviving for a long time?
Keybinds: yup, forgot about that. The way I did it in Heroic locked that out but forgot to implement that in this. shouldn't be to big of a fix
Sounds: sound effects were sort of a last minute thing, and I have next to no experience with how to implement them well.
Game length: The upgrades are pretty cheap right now because griffpatch might not want to play for too long before getting fun upgrades while judging. I might change once the contest is over.
Zoom: Originally, it was a small game and i didn't want huge empty spaces. As the game grew i realized that it could be expanded more, but now its too late, I'd have to go back in and fix so many things. Also, pen does get kind of ugly if everything is too small, especially when its just thin lines.
Aliens: Do you have any suggestions for more types of aliens? I thought of spawning, which I might save for bosses, and different types of projectiles/shooting patterns, but beyond that I'm sort of out of ideas.
on the intro, there is a skip button which make sit go by pretty fast…

Again, thank you so much.

Your goal is to make things you implemented meaningful. I would make upgrades which have tooo high rank requirment hidden under a lock. That way player will feel thrilled to see what's inside.

For explorer you could make “survive X events” or make some kind of object which works like apple in snake game (reappers when collected) which will force player to move , rather than camping at center.

For health, just playtest and check what makes sense.
Sounds are good but make different pitches , and then play random version of that sound.

For alien types, maybe there is like large asteroid alike blob which spawns aliens, and you have to destroy it quickly. You have so much unique enemies in heroic,
how you don't have ideas ? Shielded enemies, enemy which makes fog like squid spits ink, which makes you unable to see. The holograph enemy which isnfake, and you need to destroy real, alien which can posses and asteroid, tank stats alien, alien which shots bombs and one which shots lasers…

forgot I could use other new things when doing new things. events survived makes sense, but then if somebody gets only good/easy events then they might unlock it easier.

What would you say is a good pitch range for sounds?

Blinding fog aliens are a really cool idea, I could also do other sorts of fog like slowing. I already have zone code for gravity and it should be really easy to adapt. There is already a tanky alien, the one with two layers. what do you mean by shielded? like with a physical blocky orbiter or like player regenerating shields?

For events make specific builds stronger or weaker for some events, if you get me…

For sound, just playtest.

For shield you can either have timed shield , 2s appear, 1s disappear. Or you can make shield which rotates , and it contains arc of 180° so you have to either wait or circle around enemy.
For tanky enemy I mean ultra tanky, but much slower.

I added in a boss and a few events (gravitational anomaly, swarming aliens, asteroid field, rare minerals). the boss isn't great, but it's something with the amount of time I had. I added one new type of alien (slowing pool on death) and plan to add more.

I also added save codes and did some stuff with the menu to try to make it better for new players

Very good, with events game is much more fun.

Here's two changes which are quick but will improve game significantly.

1. Decrease number of asteroids in asteroid field - game lags out, and you can't even surive most of the cases
2. Add sound effects when an event is starting


My setup

How do you collect upgrades in terminus?