Not bad! I wasn't expecting this sort of game once I saw all the assets and other clues that tis is an RPG maker game, so you kept me on my toes. The first round, I didn't shoot back at all, since I thought it would be all-keyboard. When I eventually died and got a score of 0, I realized I must have done something wrong, and when I went back in, I ended up shooting, so it's not a big issue. That being said, I think that it's just a little bit too easy, playing on the recommended difficulty, especially when you get to the endless score part after beating the demon goat guy. The worst mistake an endless score game can make is when it becomes so easy that a player dies on purpose because they got bored of it, and that's what I experienced, already, on my first playthrough. I didn't even take any damage, when you get 3 hits and extra HP pickups spawn.

That's not to say that the game should be brutal or anything, just that maybe one of the higher difficulties should be the one you recommend for the first time player? Or perhaps, after you beat the goat demon boss, the difficulty quickly starts to increase, so that even unskilled beginners can BEAT the game, but getting a high score is compelling for everyone.

Oh, and the high score boards don't work. It's not a huge drag, but for an arcade-style game like this, it helps a lot to have other peoples scores to egg you on into doing better. Fixing it would definitely help make a better experience!

Some conflicting feelings here... the gameplay is pretty fun, and I got a lot of mileage with different types of moves and strategies. There's a lot of room for player expression in these mechanics, which is nice.

On the other hand, though, it seems like... a really cynical take on the games industry? Which, as a game dev, I totally understand, but this is almost... needlessly scathing? I have experienced gamers being entitled and expecting developers to bend over backwards at their whim, but like... while this makes in fun of those people, it does so while casting just... an extremely wide net, and somehow belittling everyone who has ever made, played, or otherwise enjoyed a game. Like, just in this first floor, the game has enemies like Neckbeard (made in fun of for not being attractive), Risque Influencer (made in fun of for being too attractive), Noob (made in fun of for not being good at games), Pro Gamer (made in fun of for being too good at games), and even like... community managers? Which is a hard job, since they're the ones tasked with dealing with all the difficult people all the rest of us wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole.

And, like, to an extent, I get it, you know? Being able to laugh at yourself isn't a bad thing, and you could argue that you're just parodying and poking fun of the industry at whole. But... it's not even particularly funny when you divorce it from the real life people who are the butt of the jokes. They're just vague hintings at stereotypes I've seen a million times before, without a lot of meat to back them up. Nothing in here isn't something I haven't heard mindlessly repeated 1000 times on twitter. And so when you take jokes like that, and then other jokes which are poking fun at the actual problems and annoyances of this industry, it feels like you're lumping all these random people who never did anything wrong as issues. Especially considering the entire point of the game is that all these people are your 'enemies', who just are trying to defeat you. Like I said earlier, it just feels so... cynical, and a little insulting.

I'm not usually one to let something like this bother me. I make in fun of my friends all the time, they make in fun of me, we all even make fun of ourselves. But that's because we're all human, and we all do stupid and silly things that are worth getting teased a little. It's not us splaying each other out for something little like what groups we associate with or what we look like. When I see a game like Minecraft including pandas or axolotls, and they state that one of the reasons they added them is in order to raise general awareness of a species that needs conservation in the wild, I think it's an admirable goal, but it doesn't affect my perception of Minecraft, positively or negatively. I think it's only fair to try and judge a game on its own merits, instead of how it interfaces with the world at large. Usually, to that end, when a game has a weird take I don't agree with, I try to ignore it, you know? It's hard to place why this time, specifically, it bothers me so much. Maybe it's because I know that the people who made it are... obviously game developers, and therefore, realistically, surrounded by other gamers and game devs. And honestly, if this is how you feel about those people, it might be in your best interest to make new friends.

If I were judging this solely on the quality of the gameplay, music, art, etc, this would probably be 4.5 stars from me. I'm saying that in case someone reads this review and gets turned off, there is some legitimate care put into this game. But just this once, it's hard for me to look past its attitude.

I really like the visual style here, you've managed to put a lot of personality into the game world! The animation style specifically, I really like seeing that recontextualized into a video game. That being said, there are two big things that you could improve on the gameplay side here-- number one is that it feels kinda sluggish. I can see you've got other comments talking about that too, but that feeling is a result of more than just the player's walking speed. My biggest piece of advice is to try also raising the character's acceleration-- right now, turning or starting to move from a full stop feels like you're trudging through molasses, and it doesn't feel like there's much purpose to it? In some games (Sonic being the classic example), it's part of the gameplay that it takes you a while to build up to full speed. Since that doesn't seem to be the case here, I'd definitely make those turns a little tighter. I'd bet that's a big part of why a lot of people are saying the character feels slow.

The other thing I'd love to see is a little ore variety in the dungeons-- there's already some good enemy variety, and all of them that I've seen throughout my playtime have fun designs and understandable, fair attack patterns. That being said, overwhelmingly, I approach all of them in the same way. While there might be variety in the designs of the floors and enemies, if I end up taking the same basic approach to all of them, the game ends up feeling a little repetitive.

Overall, definitely looking forward to seeing the completed project! Definitely some kinks you need to work out, but with a little bit of effort, this could be something really fun!