I think there are more issues with my brainpower than there are with the game, but I tried it 4 times and never really got the hang of it. This all concerns the Counter set of moves, since the attack one is simple enough.
I understand Counters conceptually, but I just couldn't execute it in practice. Perhaps the controls could also be expanded, since I never did more than 2% counter damage despite trying it out every chance given - and I think this is an issue of me misunderstanding controls. I read through them every restart, but it simply wouldn't work as I'd expect it ingame. I never saw a star/knife thing be reflected, despite holding space, pressing space, and various other combinations
The "quickly press the directional keys where the two ticking things" are was fine, but reflecting knives/starts would never work, no clue why. Again, this is probably mostly due to me not having experience with games like these and not an error with the game or whatever, but that also might be a sign that your control scheme is not idiotproof, since I got filtered hard by it.
Perhaps you could benefit from a more handholding approach, where you have the tutorial text, then a prompt similar to "try and land this attack/try and do this counter" before proceeding.
Otherwise, the sound and visuals are fine. The main character looks very boring compared to the Cool Cat enemy, though, but that might be your intention.
Again, I'm sure the game works fine, but I got filtered.
For reference I was using a keyboard and not a controller