I am now incentivized to kill as many enemies as possible to maximize my gold gain. It seems inconsistent if I one shot or two shot enemies but I had all the upgrades after level 5. During level 5 however the VIP rolled off the edge of the map because the 5th level had no guard rails like I was suddenly playing Super Monkey Ball.
It seems you have overwritten you previous build rather than creating a second download. I thought we were supposed to keep the original but I'm now unsure about it.
I think you achieved what you set out to do. Which was making it so the player isn't necessarily forced to engage with the main gameplay, but is more rewarding to do so.
The gameplay is a little easy, but only because there isn't much balance. The enemies don't scale with you, and there's a limited amount of upgrades. Having more enemies doesn't change very much. The ones that target the VIP are free kills. The ones that target you are equally free because you can hold down block and not take any damage.
The parry is not very satisfying to pull off. It's hard to visually gauge when to block in order to parry. There's no sound for blocking or parrying. There's no sound for enemies shooting. If there was audio indication this would be easier. But there's also no point in parrying either because it's not like you need that extra damage or that it does something special when you do land one. The block animation looks incredibly similar to the attack swing except it lingers.
Getting hit while blocking knocks you back, you could create more risk or peril with this mechanic. Such as parkour platforms if you get hit get knocked off. It would be interesting if not blocking a shot would void knockback so you can prevent getting pushed by trading 10 hp.
The art and animations for enemies and the character look great. I think you guys would benefit from having some sort of indication that you are blocking or got hit. I think you should add some gaurd rails to your unfinished level so the VIP doesn't roll off the side like a marble and make the void a death pit so you can restart instead of having to alt f4.
Add more upgrades. Add more enemy variation. Like maybe one you can't block because they're melee and you have to parry. Or some other variation in combat.