Beta Version Update!

HEY THERE!

I FINALLY have a new demo out for folks to download! Here's what's changed:

>More consistent player movement
-Before, physics interactions between the player's movement when firing and moving normally were inconsistent. Those interactions have now been fixed, and the player's movement behaves the same across the board

>Boosted Wall-jumps
-Until now, wall jumps provide very little and in some cases were annoying due to how they may have affected your movement. Now, you are sent a distance that is better paced with the player's ability to move

>New Ability: Ramming
How much do you enjoy The Fast(tm)? Well, now you can enjoy it more! Upon reaching a high enough speed, the player will deal damage when coming into contact with targets! The damage dealt scales in the same way your weapons do, with a base damage of 40. 
(NOTE: Player feedback systems for understanding when ramming is active and dealing damage have yet to be implemented. This is because I intend to address it as we get into polishing(more on that below) We are aware of how this makes ramming feel inconsistent or awkward to use)

>Reworked "Pistol"
-The "Pistol", before now, didn't have much use or reason to exist. The original intent was a weapon that dealt greater base damage than the "Rifle", with little recoil, however was fast and still had lower total damage capability than the "Rifle" did. This idea was, ultimately, poorly well made in practice. The "Pistol" has been reworked to fire much faster, and is now fully automatic. Instead of a short, disappointing projectile, you can now utilize a stream of bullets to act as a sustainment option to maintain those high speeds!

>Upgraded "Cannon"
-The "Cannon" weapon's cooldown has been reduced from 2.5 seconds to 2.0 seconds. This was changed since it felt just a little too long compared to the other weapon options. This change hopefully makes it feel more in-line with the existing weapons in terms of pace.

>Save Files
-HALLELUJAH!!! You can now save, load, and reset game data! 
-Game data is displayed in the main menu, showing you your best time and score of any given level. 

>New UI Elements
-We hope the addition of a cooldown, enemy health, player score, AND damage popups(!) helps makes things easier for you to understand what you're doing. 

>New Main Menu
-Yes, we finally cleaned up a solid portion of the visual vomit that was our main screen. We hope it is at least a more tolerable replacement until we can get some REAL art for the main menu


>Notes on game polish
As of right now, you may be wondering "wait, this is a beta?? What the hell is this?
Thing is, I'm not very great at art. Let alone pixel art. As you can tell from the credits, we have worked with 2 artists before, BUT, they are often busy and dealing with college and life as much as we are, and therefore a vast majority of the work in terms of art has been through myself. There's a lot of visual polish, not to mention necessity for certain animations, not to mention just stuff to make the game begin to actually FEEL good to play that is in DIRE need of being put in. It's the reason why the main menu isn't animated or looks as flashy as I would love it too, and it's the same reason as why ramming enemies feels all janky: There's no proper feedback systems implemented yet. That being said, the key word here is "yet". I am hoping to sit down with one of the artists we have been in cahoots with for a while, and give them a direction of what we want for the project. Assuming they agree, we can start making MASSIVE improvements to the visual quality of this game. Assuming they don't agree...I'm gonna have to spend a LOT of time with Asesprite....

Either way, hope you enjoy the game's current state regardless. 
-Tyro