I'm glad you found it fun!
I didn't really know how to balance the game's weapons since I was the only play tester. I eventually found that the gun was great for picking off harder/more threatening enemies at a distance before going in with the hammer to finish the rest off. But that was after probably hours of play testing and with an exact understanding of the all the mechanics, so I don't know why I was expecting anyone else to use that strategy. I've been thinking of ways to make the gun more useful, things like stunning enemies after they're hit or increasing the fire rate as your ammo stockpile increases, since the only other thing I could do is nerf the hammer and I'm worried that would ruin the game a bit.
As for the 'weirdness', I like your idea, but I'm not exactly great at anything artistic, so I don't think I would be able to make something that actually looks like a handlebar unfortunately. Instead I tried to make the weapon mechanically weird by combining as many aspects of combat into a single item. Whether or not I was successful isn't really my decision though.
The green and orange squares are also a result of my lack of artistic ability. I could not design a character to save my life, so instead I went for something simple that at least stood out from the background. I did have the idea for the squares to instead be ammo crates, with an animation for a bullet being consumed/case being ejected every time you shoot, and now that I don't have a time limit anymore I may actually try that.
Good to hear there weren't any issues with sound. I did the entire sound system less than three hours before the games were due, so I had basically no time to test anything.
Thanks for the feedback!