This is a pretty good game, with plenty of style (and clearly very well put-together), bogged down by a few rather unfun design choices which do sour the experience somewhat.
So, the negatives. The random visual effects every Random Time Interval were amusing at first, but after getting effectively blinded by the blurry screen filter (especially when combined with the other filters) for the umpteenth time (making it nigh impossible to actually see what I’m doing and play the game without dying), they did start to overstay their welcome. Additionally, there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to when weapons were given, when the game abruptly chose to speed up, when the game decided to take away my ability to see, or when it suddenly decided that I should be dropping bombs everywhere. All of these random elements just kinda soured the experience for me, because it just felt like there wasn’t much point in trying when I’d just get screwed over by random spikes of arbitrary difficulty.
That, and the main gameplay loop felt like an extended period of ‘doing generic arena stuff whilst waiting for things to happen (with no way for the player to make the thing happen any sooner)’, which also makes me less keen to replay the game (as I’d need to sit through the slog of random artificial difficulty spikes).
Still, if it wasn’t for those sources of frustration, I’d be singing the praises of this game. It’s clearly had a lot of time and effort put into it, and is on the verge of greatness - but, ultimately, it’s just not really for me.