I have a 4K main monitor and am playing the linux download.
So far I like your game, though it is has a bit of a steep learning curve and is luck heavy, which means a run is very dependent on what you get. It is still mostly fun even if you don't get what you want.
Bugs:
With the game's resolution being set to 854x480 or lower resolution, or with a lower resolution scale and a higher resolution, some of the UI in the ship selection screen runs off screen. This is still the case with your update. Setting it to 2160x3840 resulted in there being a massive black border around the game obstructing some UI. The hotfix you put out with changing the default settings will fix this bug for most people, but this could still be an issue if somebody changed the settings to be something that has the UI run off-screen, if the base settings don't work for them.
There seems to be a bug with the gates, after you take out the boss, you can go through them before they finish charging.
There is another bug if you lure the gate boss into the orb at the center of the first level, or they spawn in it. If they are destroyed by the damage from that orb, even after they are destroyed, it will not be registered and so you will be stuck in that level.
In one of your loading texts it says to use N to drift forever when it is Z that you need to press.
With the Dart's teleport you can teleport inside solid objects like rocks, and not take any damage.
Open Notes:
Some of the higher tier versions of the enemies show up a bit early, as the tank weapons cannot harm them, and they can rip right through your shields and take large chunks out of your health. I think that the eldrich versions should not be able to show up at the very beginning, as that is an almost sure defeat for your ships.
Rock crabs deal too much damage, they deal as much damage to your hull as an Eldrich Slow Gunner does, and they spawn regularly on the first level.
I feel like you should not be able to take damage while you are getting teleported through a gate and you cannot fight back.
This game feels difficult from the start, and only gets harder over time. It might be nice to have more healing points throughout the level. It also might be nice to have a little bit more time and a bit more of a ramp-up for the enemies at the beginning, as several times I only survived a minute or less because I got swarmed by enemies, and sometimes higher tier enemies, which meant that I did not have enough time to upgrade my ship.
I found that I was going with the Carrier more often than not, as the fighters help me deal with the enemies. Sometimes they even deal with all of them, though dieing a lot in the process. This allows me to get upgrades and turrets, then find the gate and beat the boss.
I think that you overdid the shaking effect when you get hit by rock crabs as it can make it really hard to see where the enemy that keeps shooting at me and thus giving me this effect is, and even when you see the enemy it is hard to aim, while they keep on shooting and taking down your health.
I wish that there was a way to skip sections of the tutorial. The moving backwards challenge felt a bit more than I wanted to do at the time, but I did not see a way to skip that.
Some of the collision shapes of the astroids, and spaceship bits felt small for the shape, as my ship sometimes went through a sprite that looked like it should block my ship.
I like some of the humor you put throughout the game in the items and tools.
It took me a while to figure out how to open up the ship/turrets menu that allowed me to make more turrets using keyboard and mouse. It also took me reading some of your devlogs before I found the F1 display of controls. I feel that these things should be shown in the tutorial.
I wish that there was, in sandbox mode, a way to make your own weapons to outfit your ship with.
Some features I though were cool: I thought that the turret fabricators were quite nice, and helped quite a bit with survival. I liked the item and tool containers with random useful things.
I did not understand how the lockboxes worked, I tried moving around them, I tried shooting them, I tried having enemies shoot them, but I could not figure out how to open them.
On one of my runs after I got through the first 3 levels I got lucky enough to reach a point where I was all but immortal, I was dealing over 10000 damage with my guns, I had crazy high and fast health recharging, and I had a lot of shield, this happened very quickly.
I feel like the balance of when you randomly get upgrades is not great. At the start, when you are struggling to survive, you rarely get random upgrades, however, later on when you are established and holding your own easier, you start getting more of them and ones that are higher tiers.
I feel like you should maybe have a higher chance of getting the random upgrades earlier.
Your SFX feel a bit quiet compared to the in-game music tracks. It seems like the SFX volume is set lower then the music volume. Setting both SFX and Music volume sliders to the same value makes the SFX sounds loud enough.
I wish that there was a way to go straight to the main menu from when you die.
Requested Feedback:
Is the game fun, and is replay value yet apparent:
Yes, the game is fun, though it has a steep learning curve and I do expect to die a lot, but keep wanting to continue. I do think that this game is a little too difficult, I think that some of the changes I suggested above would help.
Is the game's onboarding effective:
It seemed pretty decent, I played through the tutorial and mostly understood how things worked.
Again, I like your game, it may need some improvement, but even as it is, most of my issues did not stop me from enjoying the game. I think that the main issue that lessened my enjoyment was the higher tier enemies kept spawning at the start and destroying me before I had a chance to fight them.
-R