Absolutely adore the concept. Everything about this game from it's art style to the mechanics feels like it could have been some sort of obscure ps2 game. While I have some criticisms, it doesn't change the fact that I love this game
I love the main mechanic of how creating a ball works. I also love how you incentivize riding a ball as it gets bigger by slowing you down while pushing it. The shooting mechanic is cool, although I agree with everyone else that the green space could've been bigger by a tiny amount since it feels a little too punishing. That said, I do love how you effectively do a shotgun blast by holding on for too long. ( Albeit an underpowered shotgun blast, but still pretty cool ). I do think that the controls to ride the ball were a little finnicky, and having to press forward to be able to ride it wasn't really that intuitive. I think having a separate button to make you ride the ball would've been better.
It goes without saying that the visuals and audio are amazing. The art style is great, and I love how the arenas look as well. That said, I'm not really a fan of the rink. I think it's too small, and as a result the camera got blocked by the walls more times than I could count.
As for the bosses themselves, I love how all of them looked and felt. While I do love the variety, ( the race with ice skater was a cool change of pace ) I feel like some of the fights themselves got a little monotonous since they mostly amounted to the boss doing 1 or 2 attacks and me shooting them. It was a little sad to see that almost every boss just keeps shooting area-of-effect attacks at you. The worms and the ants are the most guilty of this. ( I mean, the ants explode into an aoe, but still ..... )
I thought the ant queen was pretty interesting though. Admittedly she also does a lot of aoe attacks, but her breathing fire was pretty cool. Along with that, I also loved the phase where you need to platform and shoot the ants carrying her in her second phase. I feel like the game would've been better with more fights like that. Unfortunately the game keeps crashing when I try to play more of the ant queen's second phase.
I also never managed to beat the ice skater boss. I'm a little torn about this one in general tbh. I think he moves a little too fast ( Or maybe that's just a skill issue tbh ). I also think the stalagmite attack in his final phase feels a little too random, almost to the point that I was getting juggled. That combined with the camera issues I mentioned earlier meant that this fight got quite annoying at times. I also felt like the wheel of reincarnation got kinda annoying after a while ( Although I could skip this by just using the level select in the pause menu )
Despite any issues I may have, this is still a fantastic game all things considered. I'm honestly just amazed that you managed to get all this done within the timeframe. Phenomenal work