Totally fair criticism. It's hard to know what is placeholder and what isn't so I'd rather you just treat it like a released product. Also who really cares about credentials for feedback. I'm making my game for gamers, not game developers.
I think i'm on track to solve a lot of what you have brought up so hopefully next demo day will be better. (I got an artist who has a lot of work to do).
On the novelty part, I'm hoping to showcase a little more of that in future projects. Sometimes you need to just stick with your less than original idea from January. It seems hypercritical at the moment but I do intend to innovate on the genre over the next 2 years. Will see how it goes, I've already had to scrap one of my 'novel' ideas after a week of development.