i was going to reply to this chost by @Kayin on "thinking about controls" but i ended up typing a lot so
stg games with complex controls are in a similar boat, while playing you are constantly thinking about your inputs because that is just part of the design. im specifically thinking of hellsinker while i say this - a game that is notoriously complex and difficult, and unfortunately lacking accessibility, but man when you get into it that game really makes you feel like you are piloting an advanced "ship" (or "executor" or "immortal enby god" or whatever)
with spell kid i was aiming to include hellsinkers wide variation in attack strategies and tried to ease players into it by putting info about each button directly on the hud at all times so they didnt have to go pore at a manual between runs:
spell kid has bite sized levels rather than a 1+ hour arcade gameplay, but even after doing what i could to tutorialise the mechanics, the game is still too much of a wall for some due to the controls. but i dont think for a second its because players arent good enough at "communicating", actually they are trying to learn a new language in a high stress environment. im definitely a flawed designer. the games skill curve ramps up too fast and i need to give players a lot more time to just.. acclimatise to the fundamentals
so just thinking out loud at this point, in an arcade game format players will grind the first stage over and over until they get a feel for their tools and start progressing further, but spell kid doesnt have much incentive to revisit a level after clearing out its objectives. makes me wonder if i need some kind of recurring dungeon or score attack stage which the player is encouraged to come back to often. add rewards for playing it with different abilities equipped maybe. or maybe the solution is to just "more than double the number of stages at the beginning of the game" idk