I finally got around to playing this game with a friend (Nutterbutterz, one of the awesome folks who worked on this game actually) and it was fantastic! We had such a blast throughout with him showing me the ropes and me blind-reacting to each of the levels, I was like "WHY IS LEVEL 2'S TERRAIN SO WHACK TO NAVIGATE AAAAAA" and he was like "LMAO BUT I THOUGHT IT WAS EASIER FOR PLAYERS THAN LEVEL 1 THOUGH???"
I absolutely enjoyed the art and music of the game, the title art is so silly and cute with all the little touches and the Miko Owl gawking at you, the font choices are stellar, the pixel art sprites are super cute, and Sanae's boss theme is such a banger!
Gameplay was also quite fun and I appreciate that recovery is fairly forgiving despite the increasing difficulty of the game throughout. I do have two complaints though: first, the inertia is really hard to work around which made dodging things like Okuu's laser walls and the Level 2 terrain frustrating. Secondly, you barely get any invincibility after getting hit, so it's very easy to be walled by enemies, lines of bullets, or lasers and just take a bunch of damage (45-60%) within 2-3 seconds without any chance to escape. If these issues can be worked, the gameplay would be so much smoother! I appreciate the fast pacing regardless, though.
Overall, I loved the game!!! I understand it seems like there's some bias in my rating because someone I know worked on this and also I'm a jam host - but my enjoyment of the game is genuine, promise!