Woah, super fun! I've played so many games of this style but this one has to be one of if not the best one yet. There were only a few things I would've like to see changed:
- Having to play the first couple levels every time gets super tedious and boring once you start getting to room 7 and higher. They are completely free and trivial, and it becomes a waiting game just waiting for everything to spawn. There are a few ways to combat this - you could add more upgrades that makes spawns faster, or upgrades that make the first stages harder and more rewarding. But what I would personally do is add an upgrade that lets you skip more rooms as you further buy the upgrade. There are plenty of details to work out with this, like how it would work lore-wise (I think something intimidation-related could be funny) or whether you still get the currency even though you never fought the enemies, and if so, how to prevent people from abusing it. I imagine that if you allow the player to collect the currency from the room they skipped, but ONLY if their previous run made it maybe 5 rooms past the room you skip to, it would work nicely and be tough to abuse, and would make the game much less grindy near the end. But ofc that's just my take. And maybe it works out better with some other systems and upgrade you have in the full game, and it becomes a non-issue. But yeah, the first few levels are annoying to have to play every time in the demo version.
- The bossfight was kind of underwhelming. It would've been cool if the boss was moving around at least a little, and I think it'd've been cool to have bro join the fight and we have to protect him from the boss' attacks or something. I also wish it was a bit more tactical than pure dps (my wrist was starting to get sore XD), like maybe he has a weak point he periodically reveals.
- The knives have HORRIBLE synergy with the frenzy upgrade. I was hoping "undamaged" just meant undamaged by the cursor, but nope, the knives that go everywhere and deal pitiful damage while also preventing me from doing the extra damage I rely on. This didn't end up being too big a deal, and by the end it was completely remedied, but it kind of hurt in the beginning. It would be nice if you could refund upgrades, or at least manually disable the knife ability until it makes sense to bring it back.
- I would've appreciated more upgrades that use the currency gained from leveling up. I thought the knife upgrades were really underwhelming, as they did little damage and tended to not hit any targets unless I really tried to aim them, but it took time that was better spent just frantically swiping everything. If the knife upgrades had more impact or something then maybe it'd be fine, but as it is I would've liked to be able to put the level points into something I actually thought useful (though the frenzy upgrade with the level currency in the end was super appreciated).
Well that was a lot of criticism lol, but there really was so much about this I enjoyed too. The art was great, the story was funny but not over-the-top, and it didn't linger any longer than it needed to. The gameplay feels smooth and crisp, and actions feel punchy and rewarding. Things were intuitive and made sense (except at the very beginning, I was making far too small strokes and wondering why it often didn't deal damage, but that was quickly figured out lol).
Can't wait for the full release!