First, I tend to just rush into things, download the game, and launch it, and I did not realize that this required a controller at first. I played through twice while just clicking, which still did things it just always crushed the fruit entirely. I had to go back to the game page to realize that I had to plug in my controller to play.
Also, the UI was a bit broken for me - the timer and score displays that are supposed to be in the lower left are invisible or gone, which also meant when I was clicking and crushing things outright, I had no idea if it was giving me points or not anyways.
The game looks and sounds great, though! The music is very fitting, and the sound effects are so satisfying. I'd love to see a little more juice (no pun intended) in the squeeze animation, though - the hands are quite static during the squeeze, and I think it'd make a big difference if they pushed slowly inwards as the fruit squishes, and maybe if they shook a little with the exertion of squeezing.
The strict display size also bit me in a similar way to some others - it did open in 9x16, but it was also *too tall* and didn't fullscreen with black bars or anything, like I would expect it to. It displayed with a vertical size equal to my display height, but since it also opens windowed, the menu bar thing at the top of the window pushes the whole thing down. Since I can't put that menu bar above the top of my display, it means a menu bar-sized chunk of the game window is always invisible off the bottom of my screen, even after hiding my taskbar! I think this would be fixed by just having it start in fullscreen, though.
Also, I know this is designed for a custom controller (excited to try it that way!). So all of this is about the game as I can play it, since while I know the experience is going to be very different on the intended way to play, I can't do that quite yet lol. So, on the controller, I had a bit of a struggle with consistency in the controls. From looking at an input viewer on my controller, it looks like the trigger is set to start the squeeze action at 0.5 on the trigger axis, which is super deep when playing on controller, especially when you need to control how hard you're squeezing. Confining the squeeze control to only the 2nd half of the trigger is rough, especially when there's no controller feedback like rumble to help reinforce the muscle memory of where the squeeze happens in the trigger. I frequently found myself trying to squeeze gently but then pulling the trigger like 40% of the way and watching as the fruit just fell past my motionless hands. It would be nice if the initial squeeze action happened waaay less deep into the trigger on a standard controller.
I'm real excited to see this game in person with the custom controller, though. I feel like that will elevate the experience a lot, and I love unusual peripherals and controls like that!