Thanks for the comments. To answer your questions;
- Yes it does, doesn't it? Some mild balancing is planned here post-jam, we often found that getting hit once could lead way too easily to a cascade of failure that would lead to Game Over quicker than we'd like. So yeah, we'll address this at some point after the jam.
- Because it felt right to have the health loss be a bit more than CURSED mode's penalty for sustained fire. But, yeah, I suppose NORMAL mode should only sap one heart at a time as it doesn't have the penalty mechanic. Good catch, another thing to look into post-jam.
- That's actually the idea; if they player hadn't used the ten-second charge until then (and in NORMAL mode that's very possible), then they need to use it at least once to clear the game (that's right, with enough time remaining after the mini-boss it's possible to super-zap the boss once and then continue with regular firing; although I wouldn't advise that).
Again, thanks for the comments. :)