itch.io

Perfect! I think the vision you had for this game has finally been made clear and it's pretty dang fun! The pacing of the upgrades is perfect now and I actually have to think a little when choosing now (I still think increasing your speed or lowering opponents speed is a bit too favorable compared to other upgrades or item picks so maybe make your speed increase a little more along with the  AI, just to a lesser degree maybe), collecting items is now a huge part of the game and using them is just fun! By the end of the game you've got batman's toolkit you just need to use them the right way but it's still a fun challenge that you can still mess up if you're not careful, the AI is perfect now, their speed is on point for all the rounds. I finally got to use every item and see the benefits of every one of them and I was able to use items to collect even more items, using the chopsticks  to block off the circle so I can guarantee that when the music stops I can get the item in front of me was very cool, having to teleport behind opponents within the circle to move further back towards an item was very cool too! Placing down oil in front of me to dash towards the plates in the center was awesome, getting others stuck in sauce was awesome, just everything feels awesome now! There's actually solid gameplay!

I did encounter one softlock however, on the final round of the grand championship two AI got stuck on each other and a barricade on the way to the plates and I had to reset the game, so might be worth having an invisible timer (10-15 seconds) to eliminate whatever sushi that's furthest away from the very center (including player) or perhaps you could just have a r to reset the round button, (glad this softlock happened though as my next run felt a lot different to my first due to the upgrades and items I was able to acquire being different from my first run (I had less player speed but had a higher item amount and had to use them more strategically))

The only thing I felt was missing was being able to see an item description when hovering over it in the inventory (or sidebar I guess) or having it selected, the text that appears when you pickup an item is perfect so I'd just like that to be visible when hovering over or selecting an item in your inventory.

Very glad you updated the gameplay, I thought there was an issue with it before these updates but this really cleared things up now that items are a core part of the game and difficulty is on point! Congrats for making your vision for the game become reality! Feels good to be a free sushi :D (wasn't expecting the ending music to have a unique track too! (that's also based on the main theme which is cool))