Astral Flux

Played this game for 4 hours now, and only got to the end boss of world two a few times. It's fun to get better at it every run. And you need to, because you start over at every time you get defeated/ or suffocate. At first it isn't completely clear what you're after. During the gameplay the story develops and that's a cool part. Kind of puzzling your way through a world that's different every time you enter it. The graphics are retro and sounds ambient. All of this makes the purchase worthwhile.

This is the first game for developer Studio VDS.
I was able to complete a run pretty quickly. So those who are looking for a long game without having to invent your own challenges... this may not be for you.

The overall gameplay was enjoyable and shows promise.
I'm looking forward to content updates and will play more when those are released.

I played this game for 1.4 hours which is the entire experience, there is no replay value in terms of unlocking new features or new difficulty modifiers (I missed 2 achievements, that is about it). It only took me 3 attempts, so the actual loop is roughly 40 minutes, for a total of 4 stages and 5 boss fights. For a $9-10 rogue-lite, this is not enough to justify the price, the closest relative I can compare it to is something like Spirits Abyss which had 20 times more complexity even prior to updates, so it's a little difficult to recommend this game - as of right now this game has 10 to 30 times less content to offer compared to similar titles. It still works as a casual platformer, so if you can just sandwich the game with more features to extend its life, it could be more* serviceable as a "rogue-lite".

The good thing is that you got the platforming down, I can't say that I had any big issues with the movement, although there is a very short delay before you can dash in the air, it caught me a few times because I can press jump+dash faster than it allows me to. It didn't look like the game had any settings, you mapped the ranged attack to the (Y) which is a little weird because I use the same finger to jump, maybe you could have it on multiple buttons instead, just so you have an alternative. Visually the game didn't look bad, although I didn't find the "rogue-lite" features all that interesting, you basically only have 2 events, the air tanks, and the arenas which only provide flat bonuses like damage, fire rate, and I think I got a second bullet from the shop. You might want to add more randomized events for "risk vs reward", perhaps something that trades life for oxygen, or a minishop that sells unique mods; the best game in this genre in my opinion is Spirits Abyss, and I am not saying you need to copy it, just see how that game does it, try to find some inspiration because your game is almost entirely empty of rogue-lite features.

Your playthrough is also time sensitive because there is an "oxygen" system, it's kinda annoying but not too difficult to keep up with it, and now that I think about it, it's actually not uncommon for a rogue-lite to have a timer, just thought I would give people a warning. The enemies were a little weird, you can kill most of them from the relative safety of your gun, which is not necessarily a bad thing, I just think you needed to mix a few more challenging elements, even the arenas are 95% risk-free if you paying attention.

Pros:

(+) The platforming was fine, I didn't really have any issues with it.
(+) The stages didn't look bad, fair difficult but a bit on the easy side. I only liked the last 2 boss fights though, even though I killed them on the first try.

Feedback:

(X) Needs more replay value, consider adding loop modifiers. For example, say you beat the game, then you can choose to replay it again but all of the enemies are 50% faster and shot more often, then if you beat it again, you can have twice as many enemies and 2 bosses during every encounter, something like that. You also want to reward completing these loops with something, maybe a color swap for the character, ideally with some perks, for example, you could add some time of locker for costumes.

(X) Needs more rogue-lite events. Say an average rogue-lite has 30 different events, your game has about 3 events (arena, oxygen tank, and chest), that is 3/30, so a little short of average. Not being rude, just being realistic, people expect these things in this genre.

(X) The upgrades were too "surface level". Pretty much generic passives, I think I saw a few small things like an extra projectile or immunity on the dash. What you really want to do is create some type of upgrade synergy, say one upgrade gives you a 5-bullet spread that deals only 30% per bullet, but another upgrade shoot all projectiles in a spinning circle. If you wanted to do something more basic, maybe if you hold a fire, you can shoot a bigger projectile that explodes on contact, there is a million things you can do with it, but having just passives is not the way to go.

(X) Creating some type of Hub progress. I know you have this little shop between the stages, but ideally, you want to start in a hub instead of a ship and have some type of unlock there, maybe saving different characters could unlock new starting weapons or perks.

(x) I also feel the game needs at least 1 more stage, much harder than other stages, the difficulty didn't ramp high enough to feel good about getting upgrades.

(X) I am not crazy on the game settings, people do get upset about these things though, at least something basic.

Overall Thoughts: 5/10

I think the gameplay is fine, if this was a cheap casual platformer I would have no problems with it, but you had to make it a rogue-lite with nearly no rogue-lite elements, literally 1/10 of what most indies will offer. I would say start with adding some type of post-game replay value like loop modifiers, add a bit more upgrade and event variety, maybe some type of hub progress, and if you do enough of that it would be decent. Not a bad game, just not much of a rogue-lite right now.

Niche, obscure and underrated games: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/