Apero

wow this game could win

Very fun little game! I love the pixel art and the gameplay is really solid. The space stations are a cool way to have the player defend a checkpoint from multiple enemies for a short time. Not sure if your death animation was inspired by Super Metroid, but if so then that's a cool nod to a classic!

The ability to split your health in order to spawn and despawn your second ship is really cool and I can see a lot of potential for that mechanic if you decide to expand your game after the jam. I definitely enjoy the minimalist approximation of dogfighting that works great on a small scale with the proximity based auto-firing.

I also really like the varied enemy types like heavy ships, laser ships, and burst-fire heavies. Several nice quality-of-life features in here as well, such as being able to mouse over your modules to see which ones are equipped. Finally, for some reason I just love that the space station's progress bar is actually shown on the tether connected to your ship. Lots of cool attention to detail in a game that's a lot of fun to play. Great work!

Fun game! I really like the gameplay loop, it's a really clever concept that's simple to play but also has depth. The start and end animations look great too!