Above the Stars

1st impression - I am loving it. It is a combination of active and idle. I have only unlocked the 2nd world and am still have quite a few unlocks to do.
The voice acting is fantastic.
The humor is top notch. I have actually giggled a few times (yes, I am embarrassed to admit).

This is a top down shooter in which you control your ship as it rotates around the planet. You are able to upgrade to multiple ships to control. In addition you can add planet upgrades. As you save more citizens and add them to the Ark, you are able to put them to work and enable additional bonuses.

For the price - This game is excellent. Very polished. You can see the dev put in a lot of time and effort.

⠀

Really well made short incremental. A few suggestions below on how I believe the game can be improved. Note it contains minor spoilers.

QOL:

1. Colour the lead ship (the one that follows the mouse) slightly differently to make it stand out more when things get a bit more frantic
2. Autofire toggle
3. Some form of currency symbol, it was confusing what the options under "World" were when they were just numbers, until I realised it was currency
4. Use "Esc" and/or "Right click" to back out of menus same as clicking the < arrow button
5. Rename some of the buttons to make them more obvious at a glance "World" > "Defense Structures", "Ship" to "Ship Upgrades", "Former" to "Research"
6. A button to sell all cargo that is more easily accessible from the main game screen, or otherwise an upgrade to purchase in Former or Ark that automatically sells cargo at a later stage in the game
7. Menu close animations should be a bit faster to reduce the wait when going through multiple menus after each battle
8. World menu could be reorganised to use the screen real estate a bit better without needing a scroll bar. There is plenty of space to fit all the weapons on screen
9. More stats on the weapons stating their fire rate, projectiles per fire, damage per projectile, income rate, income per activation
10. More information around the abilities, how do they get charges? What exactly do they do including the numbers for damage or speed acceleration or duration
11. More information around the Former upgrades. Which weapon do they upgrade (I know the icon is the weapon, but it is hard to identify), and specifically what do they upgrade on the weapon? The fire rate, damage, income? By how much?
12. Purchased Former upgrades should still be selectable to see what they gave from the point above
13. The Ark recycle button is a bit confusing at first as to its purpose, I was hesistant to press it incase it was a reset button, maybe make it a text selection for "Citizen Upgrades" when on the reset screen and "Ark Sequence" or similar when on the upgrade screen
14. The Ark upgrades were confusing, why can I select an upgrade to have it appear in the top left, only to then purchase it after? Even if I can't afford it, I can still select it to appear. Selection should be disabled, and top left should be a "Confirm Purchase" button instead
15. Show the stats that the citizens impact and by how much on the Ark screen
16. Show the increase in those citizen impacted stats (green +x or +y%) against those stats for doing a reset in the Ark screen
17. Ship screen income to damage, this needs explaining exactly what it means, I'm still not sure and I've "finished" the game
18. Reactor power, is the shields a damage reduction? A HP inflation? Is the damage for all the structures or just the ships or both? This needs to be clearer on the screen
19. It wasn't clear at first that the ships can block some hits and will be disabled, this needs to be explained clearer. I only found out by accident and confirmed by a random tip
20. Shipyard has a ship repair upgrade, it isn't clear at first that this is the respawn timer for a disabled ship, should add "s" to the end of the numbers
21. Beacon toggle, for when you know you're overpowered for a few levels or stepping away to get a drink. Untoggles on death

Content:

1. The Elris storyline would have been good to drag out longer with more interactions, or further more dangerous races come into play as you progress further
2. Automatic level skip as an upgrade, to return to last stage's max level subtracting a static number, such as 10 or so. This could be upgradeable to reduce the number subtracted
3. Upgrade for a "dumb" AI for the ships to automatically target and fire. The AI could be upgradeable and works as a percentage of the ships speed from the Ships menu. Starting low but over upgrades achieving 100% speed and thus 100% automation. This would be a toggle option and would untoggle automatically if mouse is clicked or keyboard keys are pressed