This game's intro stage feels like most rhythm games' final stages at highest difficulty.

[Mindtroverted]

As the title says. I don't know if this is intended, but for me it's way too hard. It doesn't help that my mouse is super sensitive.

Game mechanics aren't well explained. How do we know when we're grazing bullets? What is considered the danger zone? What happens when your shields deplete? What are those colorful lines that sometimes appear on the track? Does the slowdown have a meter or sth? It kept activating and deactivating.

Game is way too fast. The music feels very much like an afterthought with none of the obstacles corresponding to the actual music. Constant droning of the computerized voice about my shields and multiplier doesn't help on that front either.

Also, the game is way too fast and stuff keeps happening without me knowing why or how it's happening. Is there any fine control over the dash? Why do I sometimes speed up or slow down?

Enemies on the second stage that shoot lasers at you don't have good telegraphing on their attacks and it's hard to focus on their lasers when you've got tons of other things that you need to avoid, especially when the game is so fast.

Did I mention that the game is waaaay to fast? In case I didn't, it is.

Too.

Fast.

[Gameinaframe]

Hi Mintroverted,
Thanks for trying the current Demo.
As a solo dev, I have to chose my battles when it comes to designing the game, and one of these was to design the game in the hardest possible mode to make sure the game was properly balanced.

The Demo is mostly a community playtest for really hardcore players to push the system as much as possible, in order to test the balance.

it will be clearer in future demos, but the the levels in there are far from being the first ones or in any difficulty order, they hard picked from the pool for players to have a go at them.

However, your comments are completely valid and taken into consideration.
Rest assured that there is a proper tutorial for the game that teaches you all the controls and gets you slowly into the game, with a branching campaign, and of course, difficulty levels that include less bullets and a slower pace :)

The demo planned for next summer will include a couple ranked tracks and the prologue/tutorial so players can start learning the game properly.

Thanks again for playing this demo and I hope to see you play the final demo in a few months, I swear it'll be gentle.

[Mindtroverted]

This clarification explains a lot. However, I wouldn't agree that testing the game at its hardest is the way to go because doing that will greatly decrease the average playtime before people just raise their hands in the air and give up (similar to what I did).

And even the most hardcore of players like to have a testing ground where they can perfect their technique. You can't do that if you're thrown into the thick of it with all the mechanics active from the start and no difficulty buildup.

I am looking forward to the improved version and will give it a, hopefully longer, try once it's available. I wish you luck and I apologise if I came across as too harsh. I wanted to give honest feedback, but not just to bash on the game. I wanted to help improve it. Thank you for taking the time to respond, it means a lot!