This was a fun game to play! Takes a few play throughs to get the grasp of it with the biggest reward found with the mastery over the controls. I am not not too big a fan of using the keyboard for movement (it is just not something that ever grew on me, it's like my brain fries itself - lol). I was able to use the my gamepad joystick to move so that helped me personally a lot. it didn't exactly go with the other inputs I needed to use on the keyboard to access my powerups, but if you implemented a keybind system for a gamepad.... it would be ON! lol.
There are a lot of different strategies one could use to grow the chain that creates different playstyles for different types of people in this way. I tried various different combinations that I found most useful for me. Like combining Frenzy and Spray paint. I would see a train chain of 3-5 then spray paint my front train to collect it. Then try to use frenzy when I was being hunted, this helped block me from getting killed a lot, and while stacking emergency eject (which that emergency eject kept me alive for so long).
You really need to understand how and when to utilize the powerups to excel. This game gets so crazy when you have 20+ linked trains cars and you are being hunting and shot at by everything in the galaxy, holy snap! And managing the powerups while watching the screen and the chaos. Was fun, so disappointing to lose that chaaiiinnn XD
You can also use different links in your chain to collect other trains or train chains. So I would try to stop moving chain for other train chains to run into the middle of my chain, giving me like 3-5 trains added at a time onto my chain. At one point I had like 30 or so trains on my single chain but then watching them get shot up, I'm like nooooo!! XD It can become easy getting lost and losing track of what's going on trying to manage that ginormalous train chain, but that is just part of the game. If I wasn't panicking over my chain train I would focus more to utilize my shields to protect the entire chain when being hunted.
You should consider adding cooldown / time bars for the powerups so the player can track in Realtime how long they have for the powerup duration (really make sure to plan that FRENZY~ lol). This will also help the player to focus on the gameplay versus guessing and wondering when the powerups are going to end which can take away the focus from building the chain and watching for collisions. Just being able to see a depleting bar in your peripheral vision would go a far way in my opinion.
This game was very engaging and I hope that you all decide to implement controller support for all the powerups, cause that would be really awesome!
I really liked liked the music, reminded me of the Synthwave version of the band M83~ good vibes :P
Decent sound effects and overall gameplay feedback. Nice story, nice graphics and polished UI, overall game look.
Thoughtful of ya'll to include some accessibility options :3
Great job!