Hello, thank you very much for your feedback!
I agree that the game needs more balance adjustments.
The key is to level up the fire as quickly as possible to get yourself more playspace. Once you do that you can (with some practice) easly last 10+ minutes. With more playspace you can reach the out of bounds presents and easly run away from the enemies.
Below is a fragment of a review from another user that had initial issues with difficulty:
"After I wrote the review I played a little bit more and I had the sky change, and it was so very cool! It really gives an ominous vibe to it all!
I noticed that keeping the fire leveled all the way up is fundamental to going farther in the hordes and that some powers are better than others (automatic reload did it for me, it was essential)"