very cool. yea unfortunately the charge + upgrades stuff was a major miss (at least to me, both in design + gameplay). upgrades is sort of fine, but its a balancing hell and also supporting them for old + new stuff is a disaster. its still serviceable for a jam game though i think, but its definitely not very intuitive either, also mechanic overload for first play etc.
i definitely feel like the visual clarity is a problem having taken like a week break from the matrix since the jam end though, it was not so bad to me when developing it.. i think its mainly just to the projectile colors clashing, including the player projectiles.
it is partially the design to make the player shoot a ton of bullets for some funny power fantasy type thing idk the word for it, so the player projectile count is intended.
for the design its sort of meant to lean into cave-y stuff more than touhou, granted a 3 minute game with half a day of balancing doesnt really do either justice..
that being said im glad the difficulty select is at least a moderate success, since my last couple of shmup jam games were virtually unplayable for non shmuppers.