Very polished and impressively eye-catching presentation! There's a big variety of intricate ship designs and attack patterns to keep the gameplay fresh and interesting. The music matches the arcade action and tone very well. The generally fast projectiles and the graze area being mostly on the back of the ship limits the opportunities to charge up, but it still happened a couple of times each level for me. Ambush patterns are somewhat common where knowledge of what'll happen is more important than skill, but the short levels, infinite continues and generous checkpoints never made them feel unfair. The closeup art on the sides of the play area sets a nice flavor framing to the action, and it's neat to see it change as the story progresses. I don't know if you have plans to expand the game in the future, it already works quite well as a fully finished project, but getting to know more about the history, factions and characters between missions could be neat. It's a really well made game, these levels of completion and detail are incredible for just a single month of work!

Holy crap this is amazing! Gorgeous art and top notch gameplay. Great enemies and bullet patterns. Story is well written, interesting and well paced. And the horny stuff was excellent, merging with the ship was hot, reminds me a bit of Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner. Had a great time with this one!

Only thing I’d add is dpad bindings for the controller, not used to playing shmups on an analog stick or keyboard. Might have to bust out the arcade stick and try to 1cc this bad boy later.

What does it say about me that I didn’t realise how the grazing mechanics worked until rethinking on the line hinting at the masochist ship and then it clicked lmfao

Gameplay was pretty solid, before understanding how the grazing worked I was struggling but after that I mean if a shmup noob like me can beat it on standard settings after a few continues then it’s probably fair enough difficulty wise. Had fun, at times I wish I had a focus button to help with the denser patterns but I made it through anyway.

Anyway I was told by another friend to absolutely play this and holy fuck I can see why. You singlehandedly gave this friend an objectum kink btw. This game is so fuckign horny but in the way that’s not uncomfortable to me and rather pushes a lot of buttons. The bratty ship, the intimacy with it, the way they bond emotionally and then physically is just… uogh fuck yes. I need this. I need more.

Looking at some of the other comments I don't think I have anything super original to say, but DAMN this was so good, and so polished. Just really amazing on every front, especially how hard the writing hit emotionally for such a short time with the characters. Scraping by on the last boss with no lives left was super exciting, too. Just excellent work!

Omg this is really really my jam.  Nice little shooter, fun politics, and the ship/pilot relation is HOOBOY.  Fantastic to look at, great music. Great fuckin job

So I'm not a very experienced shmup player, so when the tutorial made the distinction between the ship's hitbox and the PILOT'S hitbox, I knew it was over for me. Seriously though, this actually felt incredibly approachable for an inexperienced player like me, and the whole experience -- the art, the story, the soundtrack (ESPECIALLY the soundtrack), and of course the gameplay -- was just a pure joy to play!

really really cool game.

the chip damage system is awesome. it feels kinky, fits into the gameplay well, and ties into the final boss in an interesting way. some of my favorite moments in the game were when i just barely (accidentally, often) dodged a whole bunch of hazards and heard the little clicking sound, and was like... dang, that was kind of hot.

i do think it is possibly a mistake to have the meter drop when you get hit for real. i feel like i was disincentivized from trying to farm chip damage early in the game as if i misjudged the distance at all it would have been a net negative. the charge shot itself also doesn't seem thaaat overpowered, so i don't think it would be bad if your progress towards it was monotonically increasing.

that said, i admittedly did play with 7 lives because i felt like i was really bad at the game (i probably could have gotten away with fewer, but i didn't know how often checkpoints would come). on fewer lives, it doesn't matter as much as you really want to avoid being hit anyways.

(edit: played through again on 3 lives. i think losing the charge still seems annoying. also, new random thought: the first level boss might have the hardest patterns)

the other reason the loss of charge felt bad to me is there were a couple "cheap" feeling enemy patterns. when something comes out of nowhere that you don't really feel like you had an opportunity to dodge, losing both a live and some charge feels bad. that said, i do think it is fair enough to have patterns in the game that simply require learning.

speaking of patterns, i really liked the variety of enemies and enemy patterns in the game. funnily enough, i don't think i figured out the horizontal guys coming out of the circle until the last level, and then i was like, "oh, neat design!"

the little story between the pilot and the ship was very cool. i legitimately teared up a bit in the scene where they were floating in space--excellent music for setting the mood. and, it was just a very cool story beat.

i will admit i have no idea what they were talking about with respect to "fishbowls."

i do think that the actual intimacy between the ship and the pilot could have been better represented in terms of gameplay mechanics. i remember a line about your focus increasing, or something, and i think it would be cool to see this reflected in an actual different feeling of gameplay (and even more so when we actually fuse together). of course, there are a million problems with that (e.g. how does the player learn muscle memory for the game if it keeps changing) but i think it's something to think about. (it's also possible it did change in some subtle way i just didn't notice.)

i do have a couple of nitpicks / additional comments.

• this might just be a general bullet hell problem, but: i'm not sure there is any reason to make me hold the N key the whole time. i would almost prefer to just have the bullets firing automatically.
• the game should let me maximize or fullscreen it. if you are interested in more details let me know, but suffice to say if you are worried about the pixel art looking bad, there are ways to make it look perfectly fine at non-integer ratios. (but even just letterboxing it into the maximum integer ratio would be preferred, for me, to no-fullscreening at all).
  • this was partially fixed by letting me set it to 2x on the options menu, but i couldn't access this until i got to the main menu.
• the options menu itself has a couple bugs, for example, after i finished the game it listed the resolution as 1x when it was actually set to 2x.
• strangely enough, the game (which i had left running on the main menu) decided to play through the intro cutscene again at some point while i was writing this comment. maybe this is intentional, but i thought i'd mention it.
• i think even just extremely basic blips played on each text character would make the dialog feel way more alive. i'm sure you're aware that more sound effects in general would be a huge polish improvement.

but yeah. great job!

This one really has it all: Cute drones with a fun relationship dynamic; an interesting anti-dystopian setting; great pixel art and great sound; and, last but not least, tough but fair shmup gameplay. The amount of enemy variety in this one was impressive, and I had fun figuring out the "beam teasing" strategy that lets you take down the final boss quickly.

You've got something special here!

What the hell this was so good. You made me tear up at that pre final level scene. The writing? What? Who allowed that?
Overall a fantastic experience, super tight controls and with delightfully crafted gamefeel and story. The kink meshes so well with the grazing mechanic and the concept of mech pilots, and I was INVESTED. The cutscene banter was just the right length that I didn't have the time to cool down but still felt rewarded. The game loop is sleek as fuck. Thank you for the extra lives accessibility future: I suck at bullet hells and this made me feel like a god. By the end of the game I was only missing one life, because this allowed me the time to get familiar with everything without the pain of a die and retry.
Thank you, I loved it.
Edit: forgot to include it but it's also absurdly beautiful, I want to lick the art. And be it.

A beautifully crafted game! Very satisfying to play all the way through~ Loved every second!! ^u^ 

This has all the parts of a full game, not a jam game.
Impressive! :D

Nice li'l bullet hell, the artworks are very nice and the enemy designs are sooooooo cool.

I liked the story and its themes (I love when kinky games are also social critiques or reflections of what's currently happening in the world). And the pilot-ship dynamic was fun and interesting. I really liked how you incorporated the jam's theme into the story!

An incredible game, with top-tier spritework, great visual design and storytelling (I love that some of the more humanoid Egress enemies look like giant latex bondage suits) and really solid gameplay. A short, sweet experience I would love to see get expanded later down the line.