The art and audio are solid, good visuals, music and sound effects. The animation could use some work, particularly Elisa’s gun, which clips through her arm when facing to the bottom left.
There is a noticeable lack of visual feedback when you damage an enemy, as well as when the player takes damage. Additionally, the player has no sort of i-frame when taking damage, resulting in multiple slimes close to instantly killing the player if you run into them. I also noticed there are instances where slimes can spawn directly on top of you at certain locations, which get more and more common past Wave 80. Not sure if it is intended, but slimes can spawn outside the map, so if you kill them, coins and hearts “float” off the map so you can never collect them.
Gameplay balance is where the experience struggles the most. The game feels too easy overall, the tanky slimes add some variety, but move so slowly that they don’t pose a threat. Normal slimes have very little health and are easy to wipe out. The tile mechanic (which seems to be the theme interpretation from the submission page) feels underutilized, most enemies are easily defeated before there is any reason to use the tile explosions. In fact, trying to activate the tiles can sometimes feel more risky than rewarding as you are potentially running into slimes to do so.
The upgrade system also feels a little off. The upgrade menu appears every 5 waves regardless of whether the player can afford anything, often forcing a skip in the early waves. There’s no way lock or freeze upgrades, and by the time you accumulate enough money, the upgrades feel too slow to get (since they are tied to the wave count). It feels you’re teasing me with the upgrades as early rounds I can’t even afford anything. Some upgrades, like the drone would benefit from better targeting, like focusing on the nearest enemy rather than firing seemingly at random. Upgrade costs also remain the same, even when stacking the same upgrade which can make the player extremely strong.
As for the theme, it doesn’t seem deeply integrated into the core gameplay. While the tiles might have been intended to represent “connection”, it seems almost entirely optional and easy to ignore. The bullet heaven mechanics alone are enough to carry the player through the game without ever interacting with the tiles. The “Ping” upgrade seems to be a poke at the theme, but it becomes a filler option that takes up a slot after seeing what it does for the first time.
There also doesn’t seem to be an ending, so it seems your choice after a while is to die, or lag out the game until it crashes.
Nevertheless, the game is a fun little minigame that you could spend a short amount of time in. Thank you for sharing the game!