I quite like the idea. The character sprites look wonderful. The 3D scale was a nice touch. Having upgrades to choose from is always fun.
I had a couple of issues though. There was a bug where after the time had run out, the game unpaused and i got the ran out of lives message because there were enemies that attacked me before the next phase came up. The projectiles and the chili were way too fast to have any chance to react.
Aside from that, the game would really benefit from some juice 8)
Solid submission, well done!