Thanks so much for your reply! I'm actually a huge fan of One Finger Death Punch and Crypt of the Necrodancer myself! Both were pivotal inspirations for several of the ideas used here (enemies spawning from two sides of the player, the spotlights alternating colors on beat, etc.).
I do really appreciate your feedback. The beat visualization was something I really struggled with because I wanted to step away from the standard metronome of rhythm games and try something more creative, but I wasn't really able to find what that was by the time the game jam ended. Instead, I left in a debug feature where the word "beat" appears on-beat, and it definitely feels like a debug feature lol. I did leave in a debug metronome that you can turn on by pressing the 'M' key during gameplay, but that is also just a debug feature.
The hit scoring system was also something I struggled to fine tune. The idea is that when the player does okay they do normal damage, but when they get a perfect they do extra damage, and when they do poorly they do less damage. This was to act as a reward mechanism for the player so that even if they weren't doing perfectly all the time they would want to get better at the game to do more damage consistently. Obviously this mechanic didn't translate well in gameplay, and I'll definitely take a step back to reevaluate how to better execute this idea or just scrap it altogether and attach it purely to your final score as per your suggestion.
P.S. Honestly, some of your gripes with my score/damage system could probably have been remedied if I gave more feedback to the player about how much health an enemy has, and how much damage you're actually doing to them on hit.
I thank you so much for your feedback, and thanks for trying my game! ^u^