Hi Baturinski! I played your game a few times, and I decided to leave some feedback! The mechanics, while needing some tweaking, were pretty intuitive, and once I understood the mechanics of the balls, I found I was having a lot of fun! I liked the cracking effect as a clear indication of a ball’s hp, and the unique roles that the balls play made the game a lot more complex.
Small nitpicks -
Some enemy projectiles are the same color as your own, and it is difficult to differentiate.
***Scratch that, just realized those were my projectiles bouncing off the enemies
The roles of the balls are not very clear, even after having read the details on the death screen. I suggest adding effects to each ball depending on their properties, such as an aura around the magnetic ball, or something to indicate when balls are boosted and which ball is doing the boosting, to make the game a little less confusing.
Bigger Issues -
The game became very difficult pretty quickly. Because of the nature of a side-scrolling shmup, it becomes increasingly harder to dodge the bullets, and because enemy firing behavior is pretty evenly spaced and either random or homing, the sluggish speed of your ship and its ever-increasing size leads to the inevitability of losing the fringe balls of your ship. Thus, you kind of hit peak ship size after a couple of minutes. This aspect confuses me on the idea/ general theme of this game. Is it intended to be a classic shmup, with the player skillfully dodging bullets and returning fire, or more of a ship-composition-builder strategy type of game, where one tries to balance their ship to best handle encounters?
The current state of the game seems to be a muddy compromise between the two, and it might become a problem as you are less likely to take such a compromise as far as you might take a game with a clearer theme. For example, I think that this type of game would fit perfectly in an open-world kind of environment. Look at Captain Forever. This game has a similar basic idea as yours, but with more of a ship-compositional focus. This game would have been choked in a side-scroller environment, and not nearly as fun. The ships are somewhat difficult to handle, and would end up chewed to pieces with the continual onslaught of balls. Glue Time would be awesome if the world was a little more open and maneuverable, with time to think about what you are sticking to your ship.
On the other end of the spectrum, look at any classic SHMUP. The player is quick and agile, and the success is dependent on the player’s skill. The aspect of skill=success is very rewarding for the player, and there is a reason why side-scroller SHMUPS have lasted for so long. Investing time to develop skill to finish a game, then actually beating the game, whereas before you were unable to pass the first level, is extremely gratifying. If you follow this path, then try to either speed up the player or give them more control over the situation. Dying of a lack of skill is frustrating, but you are frustrated at yourself, rather than the game. Dying of poor, random game mechanics causes the player to become frustrated with the game, instead, and are less likely to continue playing, so be careful.
Lastly, I would tweak the balance of the balls. Some balls were ridiculously overpowered, compared to the other balls, and because of the glue-count mechanic, I had to limit my choices for balls pretty heavily. I ended up stacking a whole bunch of 5’s (homing missile balls) and burned through most of the first five minutes, until the returning fire was too much, and I succumbed. The effects of the other balls were often ineffectual or too finicky to be useful. The game would be much more engaging if the balls had a larger impact on the gameplay, or even synergized.
Anyways, thanks for posting this. I hope my criticisms were of some help, but remember, I’m just some random person on the internet, so take my suggestions with a grain of salt. Good luck!