I think the visuals are amazing.

But the idea of the game is to trade things off for something else, which is great.

You might not see much in the game, but I think if there were more context for our situation, it would be more fun.

Let's talk about the gameplay.

- I played the first round and died at the gate. At first, I thought I had to bleed through the level. Turns out, the enemy was behind the screen, invisible, and got hit.

- The attack effects, when hitting us and hitting enemies, should be more visible so the player understands what's happening.

I think you're doing great. Keep it up!

Nice work on the game! Here are my thoughts:

- The core concept is pretty fun! Nice theme, and I love the backstory. Very fun idea, I'd love to see you play more into it.

- I love the idea of spending HP to buy stronger upgrades! Given there's only one enemy type so far and they only have 2 HP, I didn't find much reason to buy more than one upgrade - I assume the full release will have more upgrades and enemy types.

- Great work on the enemy AI! It's nothing mindblowing, but it all works well and feels challenging enough to handle.

- The sound effects and music that are present are nice, but I'd love more! In particular, a sound effect for when you hit an enemy or an enemy hits you would be appreciated, I did feel like I was struggling to tell when I was doing or taking damage.

- Having the HP and damage values in the middle of the screen was kind of distracting, I'd recommend moving them to one of the corners. The outline around the text is nice for contrast, though!

- Some sort of meter or other indicator for attack cooldown would be a massive help, since I wasn't entirely sure when I could attack again, but it wasn't a huge issue since it felt pretty intuitive regardless.

- Good work on contrasting colors! The backgrounds in particular could use some work, they didn't really give me a sense of place and they're a bit basic, but good work on the character sprites and animations, even if they're just recolors/redraws.

- I really like the dash and all the effects you put on it (great work on the squash and stretch), but it did leave me wondering whether the dash made you invincible while using it (it doesn't seem to unless I'm just bad). It wasn't super necessary for the demo, but I think it could be very useful later! You may want to add a cooldown, though.

- I'd recommend using a different background for the first room, since you can't go left, and moving the "next room" triggers a bit closer to the edge of the screen, since for a while I was confused over where to go.

- At one point, an enemy managed to get lodged in the left hallway and killed me instantly as soon as I entered a room, and a few times an enemy headed into the hallway and became impossible to see. I'd recommend forcing the enemies to stay in the room itself, rather than letting them escape into the hallways.

- The objective display was helpful, but since it was always the same objective it felt a little pointless - I assume this will get changed later. Perhaps you could have little gates that lock the player out of the hallways until the objective is complete? Perhaps you could have objectives like collecting an item, solving a puzzle, or surviving for a set amount of time?

- I'd recommend a different enemy hurt animation, since the enemies were shrinking I sometimes couldn't tell whether they were dead or just hurt, which caused me to take unexpected damage once or twice. The enemy attack animation is fun, though!

- Not being able to go back to a room you left (at least from the end) was a bit disappointing, and so was not having a way to return to the main menu.

- The main menu screen was a bit basic - I get not wanting to focus on it for a demo, but some sort of a simple graphic would have gone a long way, or even a simple patterned background.

All in all, a great start! I like the concept you have here, and I'm excited what else you add to the demo. The gameplay is simple but feels solid to control, and the idea of spending health for upgrades is a novel one (provided you can regain the health somehow - perhaps through some risk-taking behaviors, like being super close to an enemy when you kill them or killing multiple enemies at once?), Excited to see where you go from here!

Nice game, was fun to go to the end of the demo, missing the coin part and also maybe make the enemy blink and not disappear otherwise its easy to get touch by them think they are dead.

If you get a chance we are looking for feedbacks on our game, a small city builder game.