Definitely a very different entry, and a nice overall visual style. Though I do feel, as you've even said, that the beginning is really slow without much feedback on what's actually happening. I feel like a bar changing, eyes flashing or some sort of feedback would massively improve that area.
Cause at the moment there's not any feedback on if you moving the butter even impacts anything. Both people still continue yelling for it when you move it between them, leading to, at least for me, a lot of confusion on thinking that it's not actually registering it moving etc.
As for the main gameplay a few points I'd say would be:
- Firing being based off movement specifically and not using anything close to a twin stick shooter system makes it massively more annoying to deal with enemies. Because you have to try and move far enough away to have range and then move back to be able to hit anything while trying to still avoid damage. I feel like adding a twin stick shooter system with the mouse would be a massive improvement on this and allow for difficulty of enemies to be increased as well.
- Movement is very weird to get used to and overall not very responsive. There's the obvious fact that all of it is on diagonals which is super disorienting. I feel like making it more set directions would definitely help, or possibly setting up some sort of relative controls. All depends. A big part of why it doesn't feel responsive though is turning, there's a massive delay to turning which is very annoying to deal with when switching directions is so integral to combat.
- A final thing is that there's basically NO feedback anywhere, on damage dealt/taken etc.. Which leads to a lot of missed info and wondering what happened, how it happened etc.. Even just a basic timer for when waves would spawn and a flash on the character when you take damage would be great for just that extra bit of feedback.
Overall though, an interesting setup and concep, with a bit of slow gameplay and some cool visuals.