Very fun little hack-and-slash game! The combat was really satisfying. The timing on the little 3-attack main combo feels nice, and I really liked the torque system that urges you to keep moving and attacking, rather than just sitting back and parrying; it prevents things from slowing down too much. The timing window on the parry is tight (or maybe I'm just bad at reading the enemies' tells), but when you hit it, it feels really good.
The upgrade system was easy to understand, but the first upgrade at least did not feel like it was any better than my main attack. Maybe that's me misreading something (maybe it does more damage and I didn't notice), but it didn't feel like much of an upgrade (unlike the second one).
I'm a fan of the graphical style, too. Very consistent and cool style, and great at setting the atmosphere. I do with there was a little more "juice" in the combat pieces; the controls and feel are already great, but I feel like more visual feedback when you make a hit / parry / are hit would really elevate the feel all that much more. My biggest example of this is that I would have liked the feedback when getting hit to be more intense/noticeable (both aurally and visually). Sometimes I felt the need to look over at the health bar to see whether I had been hit or not, which pulled me out of the flow state I was in. My other graphical nitpick is that I spent a lot of time near the gates at the top of the arena, and enemies would disappear behind the black shapes covering those entrances, which could get a little frustrating (though eventually I learned to pull everything to the middle of the arena).
The sound design was also good. Cotton's voice acting for the main character felt very professional (and reminded me a lot of the sounds Hornet makes in Silksong); it added a lot to the combat. The music is good, too, but I really would have liked the intensity to ratchet up a little bit during combat. I could imagine keeping the current music (which is great, but very subdued) for in between fights, and then just fading in something on top that makes it feel a little more frantic during combat.
All-in-all, this is a very stylish game with well-designed combat. I'm not very good at it, so I had to use the built-in "cheats" (which, by the way, great idea for a jam!) to win, but I had a lot of fun with this one on the whole. Great work!