Alright, constructive criticism time. Where to start, where to start.
By the way, there might be spoilers in this, so don't read this if you plan to play this game.
I just want to let you guys know, I'm not writing all this to be mean. I'm just trying to give you advice, from one designer to another. I saw that there was a lot of effort put into this game (especially considering it was done in 3 days), but ultimately, there was a ton that could have gone better, even in that given time, and some stuff you could have just thrown out altogether, which would have probably freed up enough time to fix other aspects of the game and make them decent. Plus, a lot of these criticisms are things I've encountered myself in previous efforts, so trust me, I've been there too.
Alright, so I guess I'll start with the start. The storyline is kind of cool, in a pulp science fiction kind of sense. I liked how you played as what was essentially the antagonist. However, whoever you got to do cutscene art, really doesn't know proportions all that well. The first thing I saw of the antagonist, whose name escapes me (in fact, the way you had so many weird names to learn in so little time, nothing else really stuck either), her arms literally stopped at her waist, and her hands must have been at least the size of her entire head. After that panel, I sort of skipped the rest of the intro, which, as everyone said, was far too long. You see, first impressions are huge. There are exceptions with extremely well-written opening cutscenes (which, although not terrible, this game's writing was in fact not well-written), but, especially with an indie title of a smaller magnitude, we really just want to see the gameplay first. I'm cool with opening cutscenes in these, as long as they're brief and to-the-point. This was most certainly not that.
I wish this game was a bit more non-linear, and we could have obtained the first four evolutions in any order we wanted. Obviously, that would have had to been something you guys had planned from the onset to implement correctly, so I get why that's not in here.
So, the space-shooter bits, they're kind of sub-par. I guess my main problem with them is that everything comes at you too fast, and there really is no opportunity to dodge a lot of stuff, simply because we're not aware of what's coming up, and by the time we see it, it's far too late. This is something I've encountered myself a while ago when I made a shmup, and this is something I refer to as "programmer's difficulty." You see, if the programmer is the one testing the game (especially with something as fast-paced and twitchy as a shmup), he already knows what's coming up, and so subconsciously knows how to avoid things from the onset. He'll consider the game too easy, because he's beating it so effortlessly, that the programmer would then tend to amp it up for a challenge for themselves. This is a big no-no. It doesn't matter how much you try to intentionally "dumb yourself down" when playtesting, you'll still know subconsciously, and you'll see it affect your gameplay. This leads to a whole bunch of things which, quite frankly, would need either inside information or outright clairvoyance to dodge the first time. And like I said, even then, everything moves so fast anyways that there are times where there's literally no possible way not to take damage.
The most annoying part about the shooter bits, is that they come right after acquiring a new evolution. That's just bad pacing. When someone acquires a new ability, of any sort, 10 times out of 10, the first thing they want to do is test it out; they don't want to go do something else first. The shooter bits just felt unnecessary to me; I feel like if you instead worked solely on the platforming parts, then we'd have one decent mode instead of two sub-par ones.
Alright, now the platformer bits. First off, the walking animation looks silly, but that's a minor thing. The controls are pretty weird; you jump way higher than you'd expect yourself to, and you can't move that far horizontally in mid-air, so it's pretty difficult to judge your jumps. The enemies are just pests, and if there's any platforming involved at all near them they're just impossible to avoid.
The evolutions, for the most part, don't feel very powerful, with the one exception being the lasers. Besides that, the others just feel sort of, well, weird. The spikes don't have the oomph you'd want them to have, the energy balls are an outright pain to control, and the weird energy blast thing, I don't even understand what that's supposed to do, besides just be a standard horizontal attack. I'm guessing it does a spray thing when it hits a wall, but the effect for that looks the same as the shield things, so it just looks sort of weird.
Now, the bosses are probably the weakest part of this game. You see, the main game design error with these, is that they often perform attacks that are just outright impossible to dodge, again unless you happen to know the pixel-by-pixel optimal playthrough, in which case you're either the programmer or a robot. It's just terrible, there's literally no mathematical way to dodge all the stuff that's being thrown at you. The boss might as well take away ten of your continues.
The music, strangely enough, is what I consider the strong point of this game. It just has this science-fiction action feel to it that I feel was lost with the era of all those free indie space-shooters that cropped up in the 90's all the time. I'm not kidding when I say my favorite part in this entire game is when your ship goes down onto the planet. I genuinely liked those parts.
The ending, although somewhat predictable, was nonetheless pretty cool. I did like that part, to a degree. This is probably just me, but I personally feel like it would have been cooler if she literally flipped inside-out and the entire universe rested inside her. That would have been ironic, because this evolution led to her possessing the entire universe, but being unable to really do anything with it. Just a thought.
I think the main problem with this game, was that you guys tried doing far too much for 72 hours. This ended up making everything feel really rushed, and instead of 5 to 10 minutes of something really interesting, we've got 45 minutes that just feel strung together. However, I will say this: the game has soul. It just emanates this feeling, this strange feeling you don't get in many other games, even most classics. I don't know how to explain it, but the game has character. A lot of the flaws I mentioned, they give this amateur feel, but in a very unique way. I could tell it was your guy's first game from the get-go, but I could also tell you had a lot of fun making it. I guess it just sort of made me feel nostalgic for when I first starting making games. Don't get me wrong, I'm still quite a ways away from where I want to be in game design, but I could sense humble beginnings in this game, in a good way. Who knows, you guys might make some great games, after all. Everyone makes mistakes on their first few :)
Alright, that's definitely the longest review I've ever written for an indie game, and possibly the longest ever written in Ludum Dare history (although I definitely could be wrong). I hope you guys don't think I'm some grouch that's just pointing out your every flaw, I just want to see you guys do better, because I feel like you're genuinely capable of doing that. Whatever you guys do, don't give up, keep going with this. Just make sure that every project is also a learning experience; trust me, that's pretty hard not to do :3