I mean, we ran out of time for more critical things than just balancing, it's all good, hahaha.
For some more in-depth criticism of mechanics and the like:
- The Fields system is super interesting, but it also has an interesting downside. On my winning, second run, I started with the "heal" and "three light shots" fields, and very early on I got the "guaranteed crits for two seconds" field. Not only did I feel like these three were enough for me (heal -> buff -> shoot carried me through the rest of the game), but it actually disincentivized me from exploring the other fields, because putting them in would make the other ones harder to trigger.
- The controls are very fast and lack fine control (outside the manual controls option, I suppose, but I left that off); that by itself is totally fine and gives the game identity, but it also means that, while large sweeping attacks are totally fine and fun to deal with (like the tentacle waves, ring with opening, and scythes), the ones that are more discrete, like the single tentacles and minion targeted shots, are super wonky to dodge and I almost didn't bother.
- For a very minor one, it's totally fine for this jam version because there's only two bosses and having time to enjoy your upgrades is good, but if you ever get around to adding more, do make them less tanky, lol