Hi! Your opinion is very valuable and welcome! I am planning to write down some kind of blog post/journal about this project, should you be interested in how things were made. The AI mostly involves some vector math to predict where to go to deflect the ball (and dash if necessary and off cooldown) and some artifically injected "reaction time" delays, so that the AI still makes mistakes or does not look too precise or robotic. When it's not chasing a ball, it just wanders.
Thank you for playing the game and very kind compliment. UFO50's Bushido Ball was certainly an inspiration, along with some games from my childhood: DATA EAST's Windjammers for NEOGEO, EUROCOM's Crash Bash for Playstation (the Crashaball minigame, you'll see where the deflection comes from) and TRAZ for the Commodore64 (although most of the things I took from there I cut from the jam version).
Cheers