Okay. I've had some time to give this a more thorough run, so here's my impressions:
As I mentioned, I really love the concept. I'm kind of a fan of bullet hell games (despite being terrible at them) and this is a really neat mechanic to use in one and I think it can be ridden a long way.
I admit I was surprised about the puzzle direction, but having seen it in action I think it can be made to work, or blended into the gameplay. I will say that bullet hell shmups and puzzle game may not have too much in common and draw audiences for different reasons, so fans of either genre but not both may find the game perplexing. I think harmonizing these two aspects might be your biggest challenge on this project.
Anyway. I'll walk you though my train of thought as I went through the New Game mode for the first time (Previously I'd only done the Tutorial and Survival modes)
//---------------------- New Game progression----------------------------------------------------------------------------
1st puzzle, I actually solved without realizing what I'd done, I just button-mashed fire while trying to kill the turrets and all of a sudden I was on the next screen because I hit the brain by accident. Retroactively, I can tell the intended instruction was 'shoot the brain'.
2nd Puzzle was pretty easy, there's a big green bar, I have a green shot, et viola, charge the green shot to shoot through the barrier. No problems figuring that out, though I did try to shoot the turrets for a while before focusing on the brain.
3rd puzzle was similarly pretty easy to figure out, but harder to execute. Timing the three balls through the barriers was a bit tricky, and ocasionally I would miss a targets with one or more of my shots, which, for the green and white shots, would have to be launched from further and further away and were harder to line up visually. The turrets kind of made a mess of things, while trying to avoid their fire and line up a brain I would sometime overcharge a shot, which would essentially make me need to redo the puzzle.
The boss unfortunately I could not figure out. The eye was green so naturally I tried firing green shots at it, but that seemed to have no effect so I then tried the other shot types with similar nonresults, and the same with the laser. And that's where I pretty much called it a day.
There were a couple of things I noticed while running the game a few times:
//----Possible Bugs / exploits ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
+ When transitioning into the level with the green vertical bar, if the player was far enough forward the bar would spawn on top of them and damage/kill them. Likewise, the player can move to the right side of the screen before the transition and the bar will spawn to the left of them, allowing them to beat the puzzle without having to use the green shot.
+ Don't know if it's intentional or not, but by using the laser you can beat the 3-color puzzle without having to 'correctly' solve it.
+ I had this crash occur twice shortly after loading into the level after the yellow/green/white barrier. Sometimes the crash will occur and other times it loads fine.
############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Step Event0
for object obj_enemy4:
Unable to find any instance for object index '112' name 'con_SurvivalStats'
at gml_Object_obj_enemy4_Step_0
############################################################################################
//---------- Gameplay Notes / suggestions ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
((Important note: This is 100% my opinion, feel free to disagree or disregard as you like. I won't get offended. It's your game. ))
+ Everything is really small
I would advocate making enemies and shots larger. Especially shots, since hitting one shot with another is a core gameplay mechanic, and smaller shots makes this harder to do especially if the player is dodging around while firing.
+ The shot charge system seems a bit unwieldy
This was highlighted for me in the 3-color puzzle, when I was having trouble dodging turret shots, charging my gun to the right color, and lining up the target all at the same time. It was pretty difficult for a beginner, even with comparatively little else going on. It might be worth looking into methods to allow any shot to be fired at any time (a keybind for each one?) or otherwise somehow streamlining the charge process.
Perhaps also consider an indicator that shows when your ship is lined up with a shot of a certain color, to aid in lining up combos.
+ Make sure Combos are better than white shot spam.
Since the combos are essentially what the game is about, and since they cost time to set up, versus the faster and easier to aim white shots, the payoff for a combo should be something effective and spectacular and the player should feel really good for having planned and set one off. There is some of that present as-is, but my suggestion would be to find ways to crank that up to 11, and to make combo use really superior to the faster, easier methods of just spamming regular shots. Because players will inevitably ignore all your intricately crafted systems if slamming one button is what gets them the best results.
+ Learning all the combos properly will take time, players will need to be eased into it.
It may be best to introduce the player to shots one at a time and give them the opportunity to practice and get the each different effect memorized and into muscle memory, rather than hand them all of them at once. I had a fair amount of difficulty remembering what combinations do what. In a certain sense, you may want to consider most of the game to be one long invisible tutorial (like Portal is essentially 80% tutorial) as you introduce new shots and combos until the player has his full arsenal near the end.
As mentioned above, a popup combo guide would probably make a useful addition.
You may also want to consider creating different associations for combo shots besides color, for instance natural elements sometimes have an easier time sticking in peoples brains, especially if they are arranged in relationships that make logical sense, (Ice shot + Air Shot = a forward burst of Ice Shards) or however you want to dress it up.
+ SPECTACLE!!! (sorry, couldn't resist.)
Mostly just an aside, but a big part of the Shmup genre is screens filled with enemies, lasers and explosions, and a lot of bullet hell players will expect that going into this game.
It's probably worth making an effort to meet those expectations as you move along, even if it's only on the surface level.
Anyway, enough of that.
//------------Great Stuff---------------------------------------------------------------
As I already mentioned, I love your core gameplay idea.
I really like that you identified the hitbox in the tutorial and explained what it was. Very nice touch for players not familiar with the genre.
For such an early version, your New Game space backgrounds are rather nice.
The color-changing and animated tutorial BG is also really cool.
You make good use of particle effects, the laser especially looks nice and has a satisfying fire effect.
//-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anyway. Hope this is helpful, let me know if you'd like me to clarify anything I just said.
I'll be happy to check out the next version, when it comes out.