Hi ^^
I just read the feedback. It's awesome. You are point on with the things you have said. You are right and there is not much I can add. So, thank you for helping recognizing issues.
Let's talk about your question about fast paced game: We are not aiming for a fast paced shooter. We are aiming for a shooter, which feels more like R-Type or Gradius from the 90s. We want to prevent a bullet hell (which needs a lot of adjustment in later levels). Instead the goal is that the player finds the best way to defeat the monster. Level 1 an 2 are very easy to win the way you described: By sitting at the edge and chip away the monster. Later this strategy is still valid but more difficult to execute due to bullets, tiny monsters and monster movement. And since you found the boost mechanic very underwhelming, it is surely a good idea to take a look at both these things together.
One thing we want to do with the difficulty is that on higher difficulty levels the monsters are bigger. But since this takes a lot of effort and good tools to assist us with this, this important difficulty feature is not in yet. It is an intimidating part of the road map but we must add it eventually. You also mentioned that the high difficult comes with a lot of grinding, which is also an inherent problem with the crafting system. We already planned a big improvement for the crafting system and the spreadsheets for new crafting recipes are actually written these days.
Your questions about the health systems - no clue ^^ I never examined this until you mentioned it. One spontaneous idea: You surely noticed that the main character eats meat to heal. So maybe to also boost the Boost mechanic we will talk about life leech, because Poneh could bite a Stückli of squid sushi out of the monster when Boost is used on it.
About the controls: Base keyboard layout needs more improvements. The game plays much better with a controller and analog sticks right now, but keyboard and mouse have to work good too. I may be afraid that I won't do much about the keyboard movement, because I want the player to have maximum control and precision with the movement to dodge bullets and tentacle attacks. This leads to the robotic movement. I can surely add options to add some acceleration and deceleration and maybe that helps without taking away too much precision.
You also mentioned many issues with the game feedback to the player. It looks like that the damage feedback has to better point out how tentacles and body parts protect the parent part. I assume the tentacle-in-ground issue was level 4 with the red monster. There I screwed up the monster design, which leads extremely often to that situation. And better damage feedback should make that mechanic clearer.
Let me know if the points I talked about help to show where the game is going. I will also talk with the others about your feedback (including the points I didn't mention here). It's a really valuable post for us and it shows how we could make sure that different aspects of the game could work together to improve the game. I'm kinda hyped to try a boost life leech.
Okay - Enjoy your Sunday and thank you very much.