With Love2D you can easily set up something that hotreloads the level when you make changes. I had it set up so that it just restarted the game with the new changes and it started right at the level I wanted to test. So it makes the feedback loop pretty fast. However the exact way I implemented the enemy movement patterns is fairly tedious as it is the screen position 0-1 for x and y that it spawns and moves to. In the future I will probably set up some sort of simplified lane system where enemies to spawn and some preplanned arcs to take along the screen. That idea comes from a short series on shmups development by boghog on YouTube.
Also thanks for the audio suggestions. I think sound effects are one of my weakest points as a game dev right now.
It's always fun to talk about the process