I was really excited to play this game: it looks amazing.
However, I think it fails as a game in numerous ways. Obviously, the controls are unintuitive and unique, but this can be work around and be made interesting. I think the biggest flaw is that the game doesn't offer clear feedback on how the player is doing. I can ram into bad bullets all day and it doesn't make me feel particularly bad about myself. It tanks by score, but I have no idea what a good score is anyway.
In order to make it more of a game, I would suggest:
- Give the player scores to aim for. What does S-rank play look like? What looks playing badly look like?
- Make the player feel bad for stepping on the wrong color. Better feedback. Maybe a lives system where it's possible to fail.
- Maybe explain the controls. Like, actually explain what they really do. I figured out I can prevent the dancers from spinning around each other by moving slowly and that kind of works, but it's probably not the exciting dance you had in mind.
Additionally, I struggled with the mouse controls because I ran out of screen to move my mouse over before the dancers moved to where I needed them to. This was more of a problem for the web version, but you didn't make a Linux version of the latest version?
Maybe I'm being overly harsh. I suspect you have a cool idea that hasn't been tried before, but for a game with this structure, you need to think harder about how to make it a compelling score game. I haven't played Osu! or whatever game that somewhat inspired you, but rhythm games generally aren't afraid to kill you and steal your money if you play badly. There are good reasons for this so please consider killing me for not learning your game. I learn better that way.
Also, the bullet patterns seemed pretty uninspired, even for a game with funky controls. Please see hit game "Tewi Jumps of a Mountain and Dies GAIDEN" for an example of how funky you can make bullet patterns in a game with bad controls.