Hey, thanks for the review!
> The AI
It's not an AI that's kicking your ass, it's YOU! If you move, the shadow moves. If you jump, the shadow jumps. If you shoot wildly and dash everywhere that means the shadow will shoot wildly and dash everywhere, which will be a difficult opponent because indeed, the shadow snipes well.
Instead of playing it like you would play Super Smash Brothers, you can take your sweet time. The shadow does a random attack every ~10 seconds, but that's it. During that time you can build the spells you want.
Some notable spells are Fire+2, which is the beam. Water+1 is a self-heal. If the enemy has void and you cast a +3 spell, you can see the black hole featured in the screenshots!
> her health just refilled and she didn't die
I tried to keep the wall of text small, but that's how you score. Every time you kill the shadow, you score a point. If you die you see your final score at the end screen. I know it isn't very clear but we were getting out of time :(
> Super confusing if it's intentional or not!
It's intentional, it's the Manipulation+0 enemy spell - but I agree that there might've been an indication for it.