Wow! Did you make all the art, music, code, and concept all in just these few weeks from theme announcement?! It feels incredibly polished! How long have you been gamemaking? O-o
Your in-game tutorial signs are great! Although, I don't know if you wanted the player to figure out how to use ws on the first ladder (it didn't have a sign prompt). I do like your rewards for doing the challenging route versus the easy route.
Your moving background layers are amazing! I like your art style, and the music is fitting! You even make a cute little game icon. :D
Your game balance feels spot on and the introductions to new interactions are done VERY well. Slowly introducing new challenges that use the same mechanic logic is GREAT LEVEL DESIGN! Even the health placements are tactically placed well. The placement of the sleeping enemy before the moving enemy for the introduction to vertical lasers was great to help with getting use to the spacing between columns to handle shot recoil!
Even the jump arc, recoil arc, enemy collision reactions, etc. feel great! The controls take some getting used to for me, since I usually use arrow keys, but that I didn't mean it was unplayable or bad; just took some getting used to (which, I generally did and got beyond the first level!). Wow, more LEVELS! And carefully crafted ones at that!
I don't particularly have a problem with either the recoil or the enemies requiring a few hits. I think it's because it's a shooter, so that makes it forgiving, but the recoil makes it thoughtful. If it were a melee type for just blazing through, like Sonic or Mario, then maybe the recoil and multi enemy hits isn't really good. So I guess it depends on the type of feel you are going for.
Oh haha, with respect to graphics, I didn't have the same problem as others, but then I realized I was playing with my computer in NIGHT MODE. Yeah, non-night mode is quite bright, but I guess that's the hard part with the theme being "neon".
P.S. I played the Windows version.
P.P.S. Hurray! I finally made it to the end. I think it is a great challenge for the people who are platform-challenged like me! The boss' angry face hinting is great! The preparation of skills until this point were great and the health drop just before is perfectly timed, because you are guaranteed to get smashed at least once on the first try since you don't know the boss behaviour yet (unless you show a falling smash animation).