Hey there Britney Pringle Games, I got your game for judging so here are some of my thoughts. Turning MZ into a run-and-gun is impressive! The gameplay worked pretty well, though there were points where MZ's grid-based movement did make for odd misses from enemy attacks. I'm not a major shooter player, so I did have some troubles but nothing that made the game feel unfair. The art is lovely, it would be great to see more details if you had had more time. I did crash the game right at the start though, if the player tries to go left at soon as they start, the game crashes since it is missing map data.
Shooting the normal enemies was straightforward, and it was fun to try to figure out how many grubs I had left to kill to get my next level up. I was disappointed when I realized enemies wouldn't respawn since I was hoping to level up a few more times before the boss battle, but I understand why you'd want to limit how powerful players can get. The final boss kicked my butt a few times before I realized a trick: if I stood in the upper right corner of the arena, most of the boss' normal attacks couldn't hit me. So I hid up there and shot it until the tentacles appeared and then ran like crazy until I got rid or them, and repeated until I won. I don't think I would've beaten the boss without finding that safe spot so it was good for me that it existed, but I'm not sure you meant for it to be there.
Overall, you clearly put in a lot of work to make this game look and feel unique, and that was time well spent. I think with a bit more time this could be a really impressive game, but at the moment it feels pretty short and the level up upgrades don't feel all that worth it when you reach the final boss.