Wow! That winter break was exactly what I needed to get me in the mood to create something again. I took the simple concept I had for the Epic Summer Jam all those months ago and made it into a 10-level prototype. The art style is still a big question mark(???), but I think I'm slowly starting to find the fun in this mechanic. 

The secret is juice! Giving that laser a real sense of impact and giving you a better sense of what the heck is happening when you hit those flying doodads has really helped take this concept to the next level.  Additions like the smaller camera shakes on impact, a 2-frame pause between each hit ship, and a chain counter in the bottom right contributed a surprising amount to the overall readability and enjoyability of the game as a whole. A little blue fresnel effect on the ship shader also did wonders for the visibility of your enemies.  At some point I would like to have the npc commander jump in more often to let you know about new mechanics as they show up (i.e encouraging you to hit bonus meteors and big bombs), but I'm concerned that could be a little too much hand-holding.  

I would really like for a lot of people to check this prototype out and let me know if there's any merit to it. I think it seems pretty interesting, and with a few tweaks, a few new enemy types (reflector dishes and friendly troops are on the way), it could be a fun little casual game!