So I really loved the simplicity and speed of the gameplay, the visuals and audio. But the game, for me at least, falls a little flat in its communication. The first boss was easy enough to figure out, and the lives system was in no way prohibitive to learning the boss.
However the second boss was my last due to these factors. It took me a while to figure out that, first, you needed to hurt the tail, and I lost a few lives trying to figure out how to get the weapons below me. But I still have no clue what to do with the second stage. Due to the time it takes to not only kill the first boss, dispatch of the first stage and have another attempt at stage two I was extremely discouraged from continuing attempts. I get that the lives mode lends some overall tension to the fights, but it's my opinion that the bosses should be more a test of skill in doing and avoiding damage than it should be trying to figure it out and the lives system multiplied this issue for me.
Overall, for a five year old project, it holds up quite well and if I hadn't been told that, I'd have guessed it was new.