I'm a sucker for ACII art so as soon as I saw the banner I knew I wanted to play this game. What really dragged me in was the cryptic gameplay and the immaculate sound design. The crunches and MIDI notes that trigger when hitting enemies, the nostalgic pips of navigating the menus and the understated yet cohesive main title theme all made this game feel SO GOOD to play. The little screen shakes add incredible tactile feedback to what is otherwise a standard survivor-like experience, elevating it to the next level. The upgrade names favor immersion over immediate understanding, but also are elegantly straightforward. My initial burst of confusion was amped up by the frenetically increasing pace of the final waves on the first playthrough, but it felt intentional. By observing how the character moved in response to each upgrade I could intuit what the upgrade names implied and craft a more intentional build on my second playthrough. That feeling of discovery made me feel more immersed and was just really well integrated. A gameplay element I really liked was the "full screen wipe" QTE move on loop every ~15 seconds or so, since at first I didn't know whether failing the QTE would negatively impact me in some way and it thus added further tension. I've never seen someone have that as a base move in a survivor-like but it works really well!
Tl;dr this a great game taken further by a good sense of aesthetics and tactical SFX. Thoroughly enjoyed.