I've been watching the comments all afternoon, lol.
Anyway, the shield isn't as last resort as you think. Maybe I'm just used to playing my own game.
You also don't need EVERY quark, but yes, picking up as many as you can certainly helps (I think people are treating them as less important than "oh, quark! Let me grab that!" and only grabbing about half of them). If I made them add any more health than they do, those people who are good at this type of game would be at 150% health constantly.
As for the hitbox...it's already about as small as I'm willing to make it, the instructions screen shows it larger than it really is (I tried to make it more correct--at the size shown the area of hit detection was about 50% farther out from the central neutron due to the way the hitTest function works).
Either way it is small enough to be playable. I keep going on about having terrible reflexes and I've (mostly) beaten my own game.
The upgrade system is done by collecting colored quarks. Just pick them up. As you collect them your energy/health rises and the ratios of red:green:blue change according to what you picked up. When you reach max energy (150% starting) you get a superweapon based on which color was the most collected.
Thus, if you'd collected 50 red, 75 green, and 20 blue you'd get Neutrino Stream.
All superweapons drain energy at a rapid rate, so even with a continuous stream of new quarks you will eventually downgrade back to normal (100% health).
Caos35: I just tried it and things worked as they should. I've never heard anyone else report that bug either, so I have no idea what's going on. I think it's just you.
Tasselfoot: I just did the 3rd boss, the spaces between shots are wide enough to not get hit. I only took 2 hits and the first was because I hit the top of the screen, the second was just after (Kong isn't listing the fact that I did it, but it may be lag).
I'm sorry, this is made of fail and lose. You don't make fursonas by starting with a human body.
And with 190 muzzles and beaks to choose from I have to click an arrow button to see all of them _one at a time_?!?
Tasselfoot: It's roughly a moderate difficulty. I can get to full charge just before the first boss most games. Some games I don't get it at all.
Quarks give back roughly the same amount of energy that you lose in 22 frames (+0.75 vs. -1.0/sec), I had it up at a full energy but I found that I was achieving High Energy twice before the first boss when I was doing exceptionally well (that is, not getting hit or using the z-shield at all), which shouldn't be possible.
Effulgent: I'll see about doing that. It started not-so-crowded and got worse as things went on. I hoped it was still legible enough.
Finally got to play this with a mouse, so I bumped up my rating to a 3, as the game isn't frantic enough and I still don't have my promised "hundreds of enemies a second" (heck, I only get that many *bullets* during boss fights). Fun but easy.
Money floats down slightly sideways, which is odd. I think it should float strait down.