Great fun I had. Arcade games are my kind of thing, and this one's pretty well put together!
There are things I think could be improved though.
- First, the cursor/crosshair REALLY needs to stand out more. Like look at the SS below and tell me where's my crosshair.
If you haven't noticed it within 1 second, then you can be sure that me neither, and that's in the middle of the action, where me as the player will be mostly looking at what's in front of Shanghai so that I can pop up my shield when needed.
Just making it red should be a GREAT help.
(I've also been thinking about suggesting an optional trajectory indicator for your throws but I think making the crosshair visible should be enough, I got a surprising amount of times where my snowballs flew BETWEEN enemies lol)
-Then this minor thing: maybe the snowballs could stand out more against the background? They're visible enough yes, but their black outline slightly blends in with Alice's house's black outlines. Maybe you could use grey outlines for the house, anything as long as the snowballs contrast well against the background. Right now it's not straight up unplayable, but if that can be done then looking at the gameplay might be more comfortable (and thus playing is easier).
Anyway my favorite part is easily the instant shield. It's just super satisfying to tap Shift right before a snowball hits Shanghai. And parrying like this multiple times within a short moment.
Lunatic mode sure was a challenge, and I cleared it! Except my recording software refused to record the window so I had to switch to application-recording mode instead and had to clear Lunatic for a 2nd time lol.