Thanks a lot for taking time to write such a detailed feedback! Even if you seem to not enjoy writing negative feedback, it's still super valuable to me at least. Valid points all of them. Every bad design choice is a chance for learning to hopefully not repeat the same mistekes (at least too many times) in the future.
The controls are indeed unwieldy. That was kinda intentional but probably ended up being more so than I really wanted. The main goal was to use your gun shots as a movement tool too pretty much at all times. Might be the classic that I just grew too accustomed to moving that way that I got blinded by how infuriating it'll be to others just stepping in.
I think pretty much the same story goes for the aiming. There really isn't very much added angle variation on the shots but the gun too is a physics based object not always being able to point exactly at the reticule. Because of that the shots are much more accurate when you're airborne, something that you really should try to be as much as possible on combat situations. The shots also go where the gun is pointing not the reticule (until you get accuracy pickups after which the shots are kinda magnetized towards the mouse).
The reload does happen instantly when you land and do not have the mouse button held down. There also was indeed some limit for it happening too, maybe you had to have used at least 5 bullets or something like that. But I guess that wasn't a great choice as it pretty much makes it more confusing mechanic to understand. And of course you also automatically reload when you stomp on enemies.
The theme take was indeed lackluster. There were no predetermined decisions though other than trying out Godot in favour of Unity which I've been planning to migrate from for quite a long time now. I think this was the third time taking part in a jam with waves as the theme, can't say I was too happy to see it. I had no ideas come to mind from the theme so I just started fiddling with the engine and ended up with a physics blob that I then gave a gun to. So from there I just went with the concept of enemy waves and such. Boring. Of course it never really works to shoehorn some theme in but I guess it was sunk cost fallacy. I guess in the grand scheme of things in a month long jam it wouldn't really matter that much if you'd have to keep thinking of ideas for even few days. But that doesn't really work that well to a hands-on person like me especially when I was itching to get familiar with Godot again.
Thanks again for taking yourself out of your comfort zone to give a bit negative or critical critique. ❤️