I want to start by saying that I'm pretty bad at this type of game. I sometimes struggle with the controls on certain 3D games, and, unfortunately, this one was exactly the type that tends to give me issues. That said, I think the controls were just fine, and that they work well for this style of game.
The tutorial was okay for the basics. There were a few things that took me a bit to get right, like strafing around the asteroid and using the inertia damping toggle for the moving backwards part, but I felt that was more a skill issue on my end than anything else. I would have like if I had to manually advance the text, instead of it auto advancing. I think I missed a couple of things as I was trying to get my bearings and at one point when my littlest grabbed my attention for a few moments. I don't feel like I missed any important gameplay information, as that the instructions stayed up until I completed a task, but might have missed some flavor type text. I liked the personality of the character giving the directions, so wanted to catch it all.
I also think it would have been good to include how to open up the ship/turret panel and the controls. While playing, I didn't realize that I could open the ship/turret panel manually. It is on the image on the itch page, but I still think it would have been good if it had been included in game.
While the tutorial worked for the basics, I don't think it really prepared me for the game itself. The game was really fast paced and the difficulty curve was quite high. There was so much going on, between the number of asteroids and the number and different types of enemies, that it was easy to get overwhelmed. I think it would have been helpful if there was an easier first level, or a practice combat level beyond the small amount in the tutorial, to help get the player into the core gameplay.
Things were moving so quickly in game that I didn't get a chance to read the item/tool text or descriptions when I pick up items. I don't know if there was a place I could have read about all the items I got in a run, but it would have been nice. I didn't really acknowledge that the random items I was collecting were upgrades for my ship. I was so focused on trying to survive that I couldn't take the time to read and process the item popups. On one of my runs I did get a turret fabricator, which was pretty cool. Being able to take a few moments to read and decide what I wanted was nice.
Not counting the tutorial, I found a gate only once over the several runs I played. I was able to beat the boss and move to the next level, though lost fairly quickly once through. Between the random chance of the game and my lack of skill, it didn’t feel bad that I only got to the second level once. The game has a bit of a rouge-like feel, as well as being difficult in general, that made me expect to lose a lot. Because of that, it felt good when I did well and expected when I didn't.
The screen shake when certain enemies hit me was a bit much at times. There always felt like there was so much going on at once, that the screen shake could be a bit overwhelming and made it hard to find the enemy that was causing it.
I think it would be helpful if there was a better indicator when I hit a ship, even if I didn't do any damage to it. Some of the enemies with shields took several hits before I took the shield down and did damage to them, but I only acknowledged damage numbers once the shield was down. Given how often I missed, it could be really hard to tell if I was actually doing anything to the enemy shield or if my aim was just off. In general, you may want to introduce the enemies with shields on a later level, or at least only have lower shields on the first level.
While it's not my usual style, I can see how this could be a lot of fun for someone who likes this type of game. You've got a lot of good things here.