Wow, thank you so much for such a detailed comment! It seriously means a lot that you played long enough to beat it and still felt that "one more try" pull. That was exactly the feeling I was hoping the difficulty would hit, so hearing it didn't feel unfair is really encouraging.
The heart barrier attack is good feedback, too. I can definitely see how that one could feel rough if the gap moves a little too far between waves, even with the dash. Honestly, I wanted to tweak that specific pattern more, so I definitely know what you mean.
I'm also really glad the shrink and charge felt useful without adding too much mental load. Autoshooting was a big choice for that exact reason. I wanted players thinking about positioning, cleansing, and survival instead of constantly managing a fire button. Making the player shoot manually would either add another button for charge or force them to tap-fire so they don’t accidentally charge, and that felt like extra input noise.
And yeah, totally fair on the controller/menu support and leaderboard duplicate scores. Controller gameplay was important to me, but I didn't quite get the menus fully there in time. Same with the leaderboard; definitely something I'd want to improve.
Also, I love the "am I the bad guy?" read lol. The wizard definitely makes morality a little gray ;)
Thanks again for taking the time to play it so much and write all this out. Really happy you had a fun time with it :)