This is a nice simple hack-and-slash game, but it has some shortcomings that really stood out to me. The intro story is fine, but then there's nothing afterward, leaving me with several questions: what it the objective? Where do I go? What do the various items do? While I did figure out some things organically, it would have been nice to have some things spelled out, especially the objective.
I did appreciate the clear keyboard layout in the options menu and the intuitive controls, and combat seems fair to me. Sounds make sense, too. But once again, there's a problem: as the game goes on, the rooms empty out, which brings us back to the core issue of the game: where do I go now? There are efforts made to guide the player and mitigate this, such as the map item and cacti that shoot spikes from extreme ends of the level, but once those landmarks are gone it's difficult to know where to go next, or if the game is even over. Another issue is with the gun pickups: when I run over a new gun powerup, the new one is equipped automatically and the old one is dropped on the ground in its place. While I appreciate the automatic equip, the drop opens up several problems: what if I wanted to keep the old one? What if there are multiple powerups in the same location (which results in confusion over which one I'll ultimately get after running over them, as well as a nasty overlapping pickup sound)? Since the powerups persist indefinitely, it's possible to just keep the one that I want throughout the game, which is both good and bad: good, because I can keep the one I prefer; bad, because there's no real reason to have the other powerups after I acquired the one that I want.
The moral of the story is: don't forget your signposts! Take a page from board game design and be sure to always state somewhere early on what the objective is so the player knows what they are supposed to do. Bonus points if you also provide clues about how close they are to achieving the objective, such as a counter or a waypoint. Also, consider what decisions players should be making moment-to-moment during the game. For example, what role do gun powerups play? Should players want to pick up the first one they see? Should they constantly build in power as players acquire them? Or maybe they can use whichever they prefer as long as they've come across it? I know it's a lot to consider, but they are issues that need to be addressed to make an awesome game.
I like this game overall and it has some good stuff at the core, it just needs refining.