No upgrading was really a given-away chance

[Akhlys]

I remember the great era of flash games like Upgrade Complete. Where you could play levels, get money, and upgrade your ship with that money to later replay those levels and kick ass.
Not having any upgrade here means getting anythin but the lowest passing grade is utterly meaningless. You ain't using that money anyway.
that was a big let down.
I miss the upgrade games of the flash era anyway, but of any game I played in the last few years, that would have been the primary choice to have that.
I think many people remember and long for those games, because really, even roguelites don't give you that nowadays. It must be a decade since I played such a game. That alone would probably have sold some copies.

It just feels like this had all of the indegrients to make a great upgrade game pie, save for the flower, and just decided "nah, we're nnot doing that"

[caviardev]

Hello, all we can do now is apologize that the game didn’t meet your expectations and let you know that we're doing everything we can for this project. We’re only two developers, and this is our first game, so we’re happy that it’s as complete as possible within what we envisioned and were able to achieve.

Our main idea was to create a non-punitive game that tells the story of Captain Firehawk in game form, with the look and feel of an anime, manga, or Japanese video game from the 80s/90s. We put in extra effort to achieve that style as our contribution to the Strip 'Em Up genre. We’re not sure if we did it right, but we can’t simply transform it into a different game overnight, we have many limitations both as a team and as individuals.

Well, about the money, the money collected is used just to unlock animations in Dr. Unit's gallery (the third gallery in the gallery section). We didn’t want to use stars to avoid making the game too punitive.

We haven’t stopped working since we began this project, and our small community can attest to that. As a two-person team, I can say it’s not simple to implement changes in a game like this. And things have become harder for other reasons too, even simple things like paying bills. We’re sorry if we let you or any other user down who believed or still believes in our work, whether purchased it or simply tried it elsewhere.

[Akhlys]

it's not that it's bad because of that, it's more of a "sad, it would have been better with that".
I'm not really let down, just a tad disappointed

[caviardev]

Well, if we can afford it, we are planning to create a "Reimagined Captain Firehawk" mode, with restructured levels and new features, but only time will tell if this will actually be feasible.