RegEx

Fun challenge! I didn't manage to win a game yet.

The core idea is interesting, but I think there are some ways to make it more relevant to the gameplay. As it is, after many deaths, I started focusing less on the actual pattern and just trying button presses when I'm in the river and would move perpendicular to a "thingie". When there is an enemy nearby: panic, keep pressing the button. Learning the pattern more is not very well rewarded: when I die, there's a different pattern anyway. Maybe the game could be organised into separate levels, which could both have a more gradual difficulty curve, as well as have one fixed pattern each, letting the player remember that one pattern as they keep trying that level. Another factor that makes the game feel (unfairly) punishing IMO is the screen wraparound.

I also wonder about the title: sure, the pattern of movement can be expressed as a regex, though in this case it feels easier to just say it's a loop? Maybe the plan was to have more complex, nested regexes as movement patterns? That would be interesting to make the player think about, but then the game should really be much slower, I think.

(One more tiny thing: on headphones, at least, the sound effects seemed way too loud compared to other things.)

I agree with everything Aurel300 said.
It didn't seem like it was possible to get better at the game. I can't remember such a pattern while engaging with the game. Maybe if the pattern was displayed at the center of the screen, or maybe the next direction that we moved in when we press a key, so it's obvious what will happen and we can sort of plan how to get around ennemies ?

That was fun! It took me about 10 tries to win, and I needed the RNG on my side, so the balancing seems about right to me.

It's an interesting concept with a very old-school feel to it, in terms of game design. The river is a great idea because it provides safety, but can also be hard to leave, especially as more enemies spawn and gather around you. The wraparound is a nice way to evade them because the enemies don't seem to take that into account when chasing you.

I'm glad you decided to put the regex on screen permanently, because memorizing it would have been too difficult. I expected the next direction to be highlighted, rather than the one that was just used (matched?). Alternatively, you could consider showing the entire pattern at game start, but only the next direction in the bottom right, so there is some benefit to memorizing but also an aid in case you're not good at that.

One time, the river spawned in the second-to-bottom row and the regex was barely readable. It would be nice if it were more readble in general.

Well… that's a HARD game xD I think the fact that the controls pattern si displayed far away from the action makes the game harder. Also, having the ennemies also able to teleport from one side to the other makes it reallly hard, having to focus on multiple different spots (the pattern, were I am going, where something could be coming from on the opposite side) starts to get reaaaally tricky.

Sprites are simple but damn effective, everything is recognizable at first glance on the first play :)

And the theme interpretation, why is this called regex and not just an input loop ? I don't really sense the regex. Were you planning on making something else initially, or having another gameplay feature that didn't make it on time ? :P

I really like the look of the game. Sadly it felt too chaotic to play. The enemies are constantly threatening you so it's very hard to look at the pattern to try to move in any logical way. Perhaps the first level could have zero enemies and you could learn the movement at your own pace? Also the coin sound was so loud I had to turn my sound all the way to 1 lol.

looks great but I use regex enough at work and I hate it. building a game around it feels… sadistic.

I really enjoyed reading your source code for this, very elegant I like your approach. It makes me what to write my next game entirely in a single text file in Notepad.