Thanks for taking the time to play the new demo and leave feedback!
I'm pretty firm on the artstyle change. Interestingly, the color palette is exactly the same as the previous art. I'm just using the colors in different ways. The change actually wasn't because of time. There were some small gameplay reasons, but mostly I just prefer these visuals. I know some people will prefer the previous art and see this as a downgrade, but there are others who prefer this and see it as an upgrade. I can't quantify these numbers, but I did have a mockup of the new visuals do very well on mastodon (compared with previous visuals falling a bit flat on twitter). I'm planning to add more animations to the levels and enemies to increase the detail and liven it up.
I agree with you on difficulty. I also want to lean more into the bullet hell side of things. I have plans to add projectiles to more of the enemies, though not all of them. From a design perspective, I consider some enemies "homing projectiles" that you can destroy with your own projectiles. Under that framing, I may need to increase their movement speed as a solution to the problem you are experiencing (waiting for the enemies to die).
Again, I appreciate the feedback and I hope you continue to play future builds and let me know your thoughts on them.