Just finished the game and absolutely loved it. Just had some suggestion about the UI and mechanics. A lot of these are just spitballing ideas and looking for QOL or more mechanical engagement. Please don't see this as critique. I love the game and it's such a tremendous piece of work as-is.

1. UI wise, It makes sense categorically for the health and lives to be next to each other, but not functionally. What i mean is, during game play, the eye is most focused to the combo meter, remaining health, and missiles.

With attention being pull away to the bottom for combo and to the lower right for health, it would be better to place the missiles on the lower right, next to the health, and either put the remaining lives on the lower left or the blank area in the upper right, as not to divert attention to a 3rd location. I think this makes sense considering most players will only look at the remaining lives once upon restarting after a death. It doesn't demand the same attention as the other 3 items.

2. There doesn't really seem to be much punishment for constantly spamming roll, considering you retain mobility and you can still attack during the animation. I think this is fine, but it could add an extra strategic layer if certain enemy attacks were more telegraphed and rewarded a well-timed roll that acted almost like parry that gave a satisfying offensive reward if done correctly. You could even make this roll a modification of the current roll input, by tying it to a hold-and-release of the roll button or perhaps hitting both roll buttons at the same time. Sounds satisfying.

3. I see a lot of comments here about the drift attack being both OP and hurting the pacing of the action because of the slow mo and how it becomes quite spammable. I would suggest the move be "functionally" replaced with something more akin to Star Fox's smart bomb, but with a much longer cooldown or no cooldown at all. Maybe you could just get a stock of 1 or 2 at the begin of the level with a refill between levels.

4. I would keep the drift attack in in the game but relegate it to a different purpose, where it would be used much more sparingly but would have more impact. Keep the slow mo, it's way too cool looking not to, but make it far less frequently usable and more impactful when done. Similar to the #2 suggestion, you could make it extra effective against a unique type of attack, perhaps if timed well against boss characters, and it could be tied to a meter that is replenished by combo, rather than be on a simple cooldown. I think the goal would be allowing 1-3 of these attacks per level at most. Tying to combo would reward skill with greater offense. Levels could be tailored to maximize this feature too, but I'm also making insane meta-changing suggestions and feel like an ass.

5. The cockpit view is super cool. Cool enough that I hope people use it. In terms of hitting targets, it seems objectively better than 3rd person, but being able to see your ship is just rad, so I have an idea about how to make the cockpit view differently rad: double down on immersion. And by that I mean, do the Metroid Prime thing and remove the character portrait from the lower right when in cockpit mode, and repurpose it (if you can, I don't imagine that this is easy) as a reflection that appears on the windshield during bright flashes. Idunno that just sounds badass.

6. I think the end of missions is missing a satisfying transition to the end mission screen. Think of how bullet hells will often end in insane explosions that slow the entire game down, and then you do some kind of cool transition. For example, stop the camera and show the ship flying off into the distance, follow it with a specific "success" musical sting that makes the brain juices give a thumbs up, and THEN hit them with the end of mission screen. You could do any number of things. My main point is that, right now, that end of mission screen feels a bit too abrupt and getting there could be more celebratory and organic.

7. Maybe it's just me, but I didn't really know when I was getting new ship parts. I would just have to check and see. Maybe I missed some notification, but again, this is an opportunity to let the player feel rewarded, so it could be more impactful.

8. Related to #7, scrolling through ship parts is a bit of a slog. You either hold up or down and it will scroll very slowly, but also sometimes it wouldn't scroll at all. I think it'd be better if you increased the scroll speed, made it work consistently, and also let the list round robin. You could let the player control the speed with the analog input, too. Note: I played on gamepad.

Ok that's enough from me. I know making games is so hard and some of these imply drastic changes to the entire structure of the game, so I don't expect anything. I loved the game, and playing it just inspired all kinds of ideas, so I thought I'd share them here.

Thank you for the wonderful game!