loved the art and atmosphere of the game!:)

Hey! Finally had time to play your game and review it.

Let me say it now: you guys are the winners! At least an honorable mention in something, but wow, this is the best game in the jam so far for many reasons.

Gameplay: Many people talk about the responsiveness and how good it feels to press the buttons, so I will not get very deep into that. I would like to talk about the jump mechanic. I don't know if it's on purpose, but the falling section of the jump movement is kind of slow. This, combined with the double jump and some bullet hell attacks from the bosses, gives a super satisfying aerial combat/movement style. An aspect that many games in the jam failed to succeed in is actually providing a variety of bosses. Even we, in our own game, needed to recycle sprites and movements. The bosses in your game are varied in feel,  looks, move set, and strategy. Well done!

Art: The art is outstanding, a beautiful combination of 3D perspective with 2D sprites. The predominance of the color red, alongside enemies resembling Oni's masks, gives an apocalyptic sense of danger while also giving that Japanese feel (The music helps a lot in that regard too). My respects to the artist who was able to put all of this together in such a short time. This is great stuff! Congratulations!

Music: Here I can give more insights because I am a composer myself. And the first thing I want to shout out from the composer is his variety of output. Very flexible and presented great musical ideas, combining Japanese scales and instruments with western orchestral timbres and even chiptune-like synths. And as I mentioned before, his use of sound design and the use of chromaticisms in pentatonic realms reinforce a lot the Japanese feel the game wants to convey.

Many composers in this jam made the mistake of creating powerful yet repetitive, loop-based music for boss fights. While loops are crucial in video game music, it's vital to minimize their repetition in boss battles. Since these encounters are intended to be lengthy and challenging, excessive repetition can quickly become annoying. Thankfully, this composer grasps that concept perfectly! Also, because of this necessity of long format music for bosses, I can understand perfectly why the music suddenly stopped during the second boss.
However... Personally, I would not mind if you guys repeated the first boss battle music hahaha, it's better to repeat than to have nothing in the background.

Just as a personal taste, I would try to reinforce more of that Japanese feel in the boss battle. It's very present in the game title, but not that much in the rest. Japanese music is characterized by its "Dark" quality; mostly the "In-sen" scale represents the best qualities of classical and court Japanese music. The boss music, however, feels very bright; some extensions even remind me of a kind of Lydian sound, wich is not coherent with the previous musical elements and the feel of the game.
Using diatonic scales to represent Japanese music is not a problem, but in this case, I would rather choose a Phrygian Scale. It has the same tone quality as Japanese anhemitonic scales. And the relationship between the 1st and 2nd grade of the Phrygian gives exactly the same feels as the In-sen scale. In fact, the Phrygian scale IS the In-sen scale but with one extra note.

Overall, the game is great. I believe you guys will win. It has creativity, quality, and everything about it is great. Wish you success, guys!

That was awesome!