I like the visuals. The thick outline made it really easy to tell the difference between enemies. As others have said, my only  complaint is there is no feedback on when I land an attack or enemies hit me. Also kind of difficult to interpret hitboxes. I definitely think there is a lot of potential here and really like how the power-up system worked.

I like the art. It was nice that you could hold down the attack button. It was hard to tell when the mele enemies were attacking. If you showed some sort of windup then it would help when trying to dodge them as well.

Fun concept with the tradeoff for each powerup, buffing enemies in a different way for every buff you give yourself.

That being said, I was struggling a bit with understanding when I got hit and when I was in range of an attack, so I wasn't sure how to position myself and time my attacks, often dying pretty quickly.

If you plan to continue the game I suggest adding visual and audio feedback for getting hit and for when you stop being invincible after a hit. Music and more different sfx would also help a lot, the sound of hitting an enemy was a bit loud against the silence of the game.

The penalty idea was nice though, with how you could strategically weigh the buffs you want VS not making the enemies too dangerous to fight against.

The biggest challenge of playing this game was understanding the enemies' attack range and hitboxes. Often, it felt like we would charge at one another furiously waving our swords, and the damage dealt was mostly random.

I did like how holding the attack button locked your weapon swing arc to a set angle, which encouraged me to strategically strafe and line up enemies - I just wish that the hit detection was a little more transparent so that my strategic maneuvering would pay off.

I did notice that there was a distinct "sword clash" sound effect for when my sword collided with an enemy weapon - that's a really cool detail!

Great use and implementation of the classic Kenney game assets!

Fun game, interesting and varied upgrades/penalties too, I liked them! Sometimes the enemy hitboxes felt a bit unfair, I think it was because it was hard to tell what their range was exactly, and their hit animations would happen instantly. A little polish there would go a long way, especially with the melee enemies. All in all though quite fun!