Your feedback said one thing five different ways: it is hard to read anything when the whole point is to move fast, and the game never told you what things are. One of you asked for a glossary on the pause screen. One of you just wrote "no tutorial". This update is the answer, and most of it came from watching where new players actually got confused.
- The game has one calm teaching voice now. Exactly one hint on screen at a time, and every lesson goes away forever the moment you do the thing it taught. No more text piling up mid-fight.
- Your first flight opens with the whole game in one line: avoid red, smash everything else.
- New pilots choose: jump straight in, or a 45 second warmup where your hull is safe while you learn to smash, graze and overload. Skipped it? It waits in Settings as WARMUP RUN.
- The first time you meet a pylon, a laser fence or a mine, time slows for a beat and the game names it and tells you the one thing that matters. Once per thing, ever.
- Your hits and their hits no longer look alike. Damage you deal is always cyan, with numbers on boss parts and a visible bite out of the boss health bar. Damage you take is a red flash at the edge of the screen, never a white-out.
- Bolts and mines left the gold color family. Warm gold is always yours. Red always hurts.
- Overload wears its remaining time as a gold ring on your ship, and the game tells you the moment your first bar fills, on whatever button you have it bound to.
- Pause now shows chips for everything around you, each with a one-word answer, and tapping one opens its Field Guide entry.
- Your first power-up and your first path choice each get a one-time explainer.
- Nothing sneaks up at top speed anymore: enemies never appear closer than a second away along your line, the screen gets quieter the faster you go, and explosions can no longer hide live shots or mines.
The pause glossary you asked for was actually already in the game. Nobody found it, which told me the real problem: knowledge sitting in a menu does not exist at speed. So now the game teaches in the moment, and the menu is just the deep dive.
Does the first run make sense now? I want to hear where it still loses you.