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Thanks for the trigger warnings at the start of the game, they helped set me in the right mind to play the game.

The voice work in the intro was really well done, it really portrayed the characters well, in my opinion.

You did a good job showing Vega's depression and treating it with care. His inner thoughts and comments feel very real. He feels like someone who is hurting and is in need of help.

I think the volume could use with a little more normalization.

Some of the SFX felt a little loud compared to the music, particularly on the Menu and Extras pages. I lowered the SFX volume manually, which helped.

It would have been nice if there had been a SFX and Voice line played when I adjusted the setting to make it easier to balance them.

I feel like the notes/arrows in music practice appear kind of suddenly. I feel like they should start off-screen.

In the scene at the end of the intro you go from a dark scene to a white screen really quickly, I feel like that is a bit much of a shift.

I liked the art quite a bit. It did a good job of giving me an idea of the type of person each character was. The backgrounds were good at setting the mood and giving a feel of the different locations, and in my opinion they look quite good (I'm specifically pointing this out because in your pre-game dialog you talk about the BGs looking like shit, so I wanted say that they look good, in my opinion).

I found the story engaging. The way it started really drew me in and had me invested right away. From the very beginning I wanted to learn more about the characters, and that only increased as I played.

You did a really good job with the different characters. Even with their very different personalities, it was very clear how much they cared about Vega and each other, even if they showed it in ways some people would not view as them caring for each other. They felt like real people, with their own identities.

Extras Notes:

I think the Extras page was a nice touch. I liked being able to read a little bit more about each character in the Profiles, and I look forward to seeing what else is added as the game progresses.

The way the profiles look makes me think that this group might be part of some sort of experiment that they don't know about.

Aza, Val, and Leo all have their hair listed with two colors, one being their natural color and the other being their dyed/un-natural color, Vega only lists brown even though he has blue highlights.

Extras Notes End.

I feel like I had very little control over what happened in the game. I would like to be able to do more and make some choices that impact how the game goes. The story was well written enough that I didn't mind it feeling like this, and I would enjoy playing the next part of the story when it's out, but I still would prefer having more choices.

Both Aza and Vega have a chain hanging around their pants, is there a reason for this, or is it just decoration? The reason why I think it might be something more then just decoration is that the Val and Leo don't have it, it is just Aza and Vega, so might that be family related. I also acknowledged a butterfly necklace on both of them. Someone else who I was talking with said that that would looked like a two part necklace that you would give one part to your best friend/family, which added to my wondering about the chain.

That is all of my notes. I played through the demo, and am interested in seeing what more is to come.

The Voice in the news report is quiet compared to the staticy sound in the background.

The menu music is substantially louder then the opening audio. Headphone users especially could get a very unpleasant surprise after the opening ends. You need to better balance the audio.

The beginning of the music in the menu screen does not sound good, the beeping sound is unpleasant.

I feel like the help button is un-necessary as it is, it might be better to just have the instructions on the menu at all times.

There were some asteroids that had glitchy sprites, they broke into the largest type of asteroid.

If you die too many times, when you press space it crashes the game, this feels intended, and I do not like it, especially since it gives no indication that it will crash the game.

The buildup of asteroids is much too fast, to start with there is a decent amount, then after a little bit, you are flooded by asteroids.

I would prefer it if you could move your ship with WASD.

The core gameplay is not that fun and engaging for me to want to play, and the cutscenes/story audio don't really change it that much to me. The core gameplay being spamming mouse clicks is not very fun, especially since you need to move with arrow keys.

The collision shape for the ship felt far too big. Regularly I would have a asteroid take me out without touching my ship, they were around a ship's width away from any part of the sprite. Either your ship's sprite should be bigger to match the collision shape, or the collision shape should be smaller to match the sprite.

Hey, so sorry I didn't get a review up for last month's jam, we were busy working on Eldwyn's Dungeon Academy, so my review never got finalized and posted.

I like the purring SFX when you are using Extra Pets.

In the upgrade screen, when you click on the upgrade button it shows options to buy 1, 5, and 10. I feel like those should just be there to start with, and instead of clicking the upgrade button and then choosing which option to go with.

I played around with the mini-games. They are cute and add to the feel of the game. You'll quickly have enough money to do them as often as you want, which makes them even more nice, in my opinion. I certainly like the ability to purchase many at a time for these. It is nice for the regular upgrades, but the consumables are where I use this the most.

I got a silly screenshot with a ball of cats, all attracted to the laser pointer that I wanted to share.

Related to the laser pointer and the screenshot above, if you rapid fire turn the laser on and off at the same point you can have the same effect as if you were moving the laser pointer around and not letting the cats get it, but without moving the laser pointer. Is this something you want?

I really like the design you have for the cats and upgrades, with the top and bottom bars framing an image. The top and bottom do a great job of giving you place for text that fits the styling.

I got all of my upgrades up to level 15-25, and then let it sit on the side for a while while playing a different jam game. The interactions between the people and the cats help to keep the game interesting even while it is in the background. There is plenty of movement and things happening, which fits the "Chaos Cat Cafe" feel.

I got the upgrades up to level 110-143, and I got a cafe level of a little over 400. My cat customer plays was 833, my cat interactions was 3760, and rising quickly. I got all of the achievements. I earned a total of 1,585,213 income, and I played for 1:41:15.

I do not have any more notes for this release. This is a solid demo. I would love to see the full game when it is released.

-R (Yes, from DIS Kids.)

It would be nice if there was some calm music in the background. Potentially even having different tracks for the different areas.

I feel like the level progression could use some work. The last two levels of the hatchery were the only ones that I had troubles with. Those felt like a jump up in difficulty compared to progression of all of the other levels.

I think that the Commons could use some work. Once you figure out who likes who and that happy cheers up grumpy it is mostly just the same thing but with more blobs. Potentially having more colors and more moods, so that it keeps the same concept but remains more interesting.

Overall the Nursery and the Reef felt pretty good, although they were all mostly easy. The one thing that I felt kind of sad about was that in the Reef you could not feed all of the creatures, and so some would still be hungry at the end of the level. :(

I found being able to play with the physics to be fun. That made me think that you could potentially make a set of levels that use physics.

Overall this game seems pretty good and I look forward to seeing it come to Steam.

Hey, I like the updates you have been doing over the past month, They really add to the feel of the game. The game is shaping up quite nicely.

I'm still getting used to the name change. I preferred it as Anachronium, but understand why you changed the name.

Open Notes:

I am going into this without looking at the devlogs, just to get a blind feel for how things have changed.

I am starting with the tutorial this run.

I really like the new sprites for your ships. They look good.

I like the UI updates, they help it feel more polished.

On the tutorial, on the move step, clicking on the button in the bottom UI did not give any result, I needed to click on the button below the ship.

I beat the tutorial on my second turn and got the final popup, however the end-of-combat scene showed up and the popup flew off screen before I could fully read it.

In the card select screen tutorial, after you finish it, the previous button is still there and if you click the button that you normally would to enter a combat, it will re-start the tutorial.

I feel like the early enemies have a too high miss rate. I went through the first mission without taking a single point of damage because the enemies kept missing with every single shot they fired. Edit: Reading some of your devlogs, and looking at my settings, it looks like I am on easy mode. I did not seem to get any other buffs from that, so I am wondering if it being listed as easy mode is a bug? I did not touch my settings at all this run until checking the difficulty. I am setting my difficulty to Medium, and may later play again and see what is different. Edit: Playing again at Medium, I would say that I was on easy before. I did not have Sniper's Dream on any of my ships when on easy mode.

Looking at your screenshots, it looks like they are all old. You may want to get some new screenshots because of how much the game's look and stats have changed. The one that, in my opinion, should get updated the most is the one that shows Anachroniser, that is several versions old, and does not actually reflect how the page looks, several of the energy values on the cards are incorrect, and several have been added to that tab since the screenshot. (Sorry if this section feels a bit ranty and as though I dislike your screenshots. I am trying to explain why I am thinking that they should be updated, but I could see it coming across aggressively.)

Being able to move my ships around before a combat is sooo nice. One note I have on this is, I feel like the boxes around your ships are a little large, I found myself bumping into the box around the ship that I was trying to get next to quite a bit.

It would be nice if the practice mode had an option to revive player ships and one to revive enemy ships.

It is a bit odd that the Shotgun card "Barrage Shotgun" has red shots, even though all of the other shotguns have blue shots.

Meteor Shower is listed as "Auto-targets closest ally.", that feels a bit odd considering it does not seem to have a target. Maybe instead "Targets Nobody", or something like that.

I feel like the Feather Striker enemies are a bit too powerful, especially when they have a Heal Bot in the same fight. I had a fight where two Feather Strikers and a Heal Bot took out my full HP ships in one turn. The Feather Strikers did Crit Remorse Flower, and the Heal bot did a Crit basic attack, finishing off Valkyrie. That felt bad, because there was no indication that something like that was going to happen, at that point I was doing very well and destroying most fights, but then that one fight took me out in one turn. On a similar note, I feel like the combat with Mobile Destroyers and Energy Crusaders has a similar issue with the fact that on the second turn the Energy Crusaders will Overcharge the Mobile Destroyers and then the Mobile Destroyers will use Fibonacci Strike, which is an almost sure loss of ships.

Okay, playing more with Intoxicated Gremlins, on Kunai, WOW! How did I not try this out more. It is now a large part of my strategy with Kunai. Thank you for recommending it, and making me think to try it more, cause that makes Kunai's attack so much more powerful. Thinking on that card more, I think that part of why it is so powerful is because of how tight the arc on Kunai is, using the gremlins card increases the crit area by a proportionally larger area compared to other ships, and so even if you are not perfect on your aim, you are more likely to get a crit.

Some notes on the settings:

I like the look of the Settings screen. The colors, icons, and overall theming looks good.

The popup of the Difficulty option is using the default godot grey theme which looks bad compared to everything else.

It would be nice if there were tooltips when hovering/focusing a control.

What does Performance Mode mean? I did not play around with it yet, but it is not clear to me what it will do to the game/gameplay. Tooltips would help with this.

I think that you way want a option for the galaxies in the background in combat.

Settings Notes End.

When you try to buy a ship, the buy ship button lists it as 100K, which is the cost, but the popup say that it will cost 200K.

In Arcania S's ship select stats it lists energy production as 0 but in one of your devlogs, you say that you increased the starting energy production. I have not bought the ship, so I cannot say which way it is. I think that having Arcania starting with one energy production is a good choice.

Requested Feedback/Comments for Reviewers:

Would love feedback on the newer abilities. Note that they are only accessible using "unlock all cards" from the settings:

I like the new abilities. One note I do have on the Void Bullet, it does not seem to mention that it will destroy the ship that fires the bullet. You might want to mention that it destroys the attacking ship.

I did not use Meteor Shower much at all, since I seem to have terrible luck with that type of random ability. The one time I did use it, in the practice mode, it did a lot more damage to my ships than it did to the enemies.

Saul Over is a cool idea, though I doubt that I would use it in-game because of how I do my fights, and the fact that I still prefer Valkyrie to Arcania because Valkyrie has a starting 2 energy gain, which allows me to attack quickly, without worrying about whether I have lost enough HP on Arcania to gain 2 or more energy. I might play around with this ability in the battle mode, if I get an upgrade that increases one of my ship's energy max to 6 or higher.

- New Ability select screen:

I like it. I really like both being able to move your ships around and decide what configuration they will be in, and I like being able to test out what your new abilities look like.

- Steam worthiness in its current state:

I am not the best judge of this, but I think that it is absolutely something that could work on Steam, as long as you are able to do the right marketing to get noticed. Reading Dragon's section on this, I would agree with what they say.

- Weakest part of the game and the best:

I'm not really sure on the weakest part of the game. Maybe the tutorial? I would say the best part is the combat, managing your energy, and strategizing how to take enemies out is really fun, and overall feels well balanced.

- What sets this game apart from other games:

I have not seen any games that have this combination of story, deckbuilding, strategy, and the general theme before. I would say that the way that you combine these factors, sets your game apart from others that have some similar themes or concepts. I am not that great at explaining things like this so, sorry if it isn't clear what I mean.

- What are the four things that you consider to be a part of the game loop:

I am not fully sure I understand what this means, so I will answer with what I think that it means.

If I were to boil the game loop down to four things I think that they would be:

Combat, Deckbuild (Gain more cards so that you can get further.), Prep for next combat (sort of like Deckbuild but more focused on things like healing, and moving your ships around based on your cards.), and Story,

Telrym Draconis is going to be mentioning some typos, so I am not listing them.

That is all for now, the updates that you have made over the past month have really helped the feel of the game, in my opinion.

-R (Yep, -R from DIS Kids. After this jam, unless I cannot use this account, I will no longer be doing the -R at the end of my reviews because I have a separate account from the base DIS Kids.)