I know that the indie scene on XNA is fairly new but that does not mean we need to forget how important user testing is on our games. We as developers often fall into the trap that if it feels good to us then other people will love the game. However this is a misguided form of thinking as we have intimate knowledge of the inner workings of our games. All the subtle rules and interactions that we know about most likely does not translate well in the eyes of a new user. So I just want to call out that each XNA developer should:

1. Get as many friends/family to try out the game in it's different phases/milestones. The higher the frequency the better
2. Test on the target platform. PC and Xbox have different user experiences and with WP7 coming out the need to test on mobile devices is needed too
3. Make sure the people who play your game are familiar as well as unfamiliar with the genre. The different view points from each of these groups are really important in determining if your ideas/systems are being perceived as you intended

After discovering that the game had an inefficient way of handling the turrets I have been able to increase performance of the game on the Xbox 360 which has always been a pain point in developing on XNA. I've also cleaned up the collision handling code and removed alot of excess calls that were not needed in the first place. I've also changed how the projectiles are rendered to make them more visible and crisper to the user, I used to do additive blend to make them more glowy, but the end resultas a bit blurrier and less defined outline that made them hard to see. I also made the background into a darker shade to make the ships seem more saturated/desaturated. I have also been tweaking with gameplay as I am trying to find the balance of making the game exciting at the first enemy versus easing in the player into the action. Overall though I am happy with the changes to the game both visually and techincally. However I am still unhappy with the gameplay. Here is a video of the latest changes: