This is stupid fun to play!
I like a lot of things, so I'll just list them:
- Minimal learning curve (aka, I did not need to spend needless brain effort to have a great time, but still had meaningful decisions to make).
- You get thrown into the fun immediately.
- There is a persistent sense of progress despite the randomized intermediate upgrades - I presume that these get lost, though I did not pay enough attention to tell for sure.
- Seeing new (and scarier) enemies the more I progressed was great and kind of mind-blowing (just when I thought I was comfortable with which scary things would appear and how to handle them, new ones kept popping up).
- Props for the weapons being different for different difficulties - this was a great way to control the experience without making us feel stupider for trying the "easier" ones. For example, after I realised a katana was too much for me from the get-go, I switched to a gun which was still hard at first but satisfactory because I really liked how it plays out. You basically let me control the difficult-vs-coolness factor to what I was comfortable with, which was great.
Only recomendation is to maybe not make the chips and health bars continuous, e.g., split into rectangural blocks or icons to help understand what they are from the get-go.