this game looks great 

personally, I have always loved the pixel perfect art style

I got to say this game is good, but it is a bit hard, and I only manage to get to stage 6 but it could just be a skill issue

Incredible for 3 Days :D

Hot damn, this game is REALLY good. Five stars all around. And made in only 3 days? I'm realizing that the optimal game jam strat might be to make something really small and just polish it up to a tee. That's what you've done here, and it works.

The artstyle is great. It's what made me think "I have to check this out" when someone on my team linked it on Discord, and it absolutely delivers. The 2-bit color palette you're rocking looks super good, and the low-shading style works wonders here.

The sound effects are great (bfxr my beloved). Dealing hits, getting hit, buying things from the shop, all of these sound amazing. I especially love that juicy, succulent explosion sound (bfxr is great for those).

The gameplay is great. The flail is surprisingly tough to use, but not so much so that it feels out of the player's control. You have to get the right rotation speed to get the flail moving anywhere, and you can't move the cursor around too fast lest the flail snap back to you. It's a satisfying balance to pull off. There's also a good amount of enemy variety, which is appreciated. The quick guys in particular make the later waves really hard. I got stuck at wave 10 until I learned to discern when I needed to carefully move my mouse to dodge the 15 enemies on screen and when it was time to go flail-a-swingin'. I also learned the technique of getting the guys near the middle and quickly zooming across the border of the screen to reposition yourself. Those improvements got me to… wave 13 on my 3rd run and wave 12 on my 4th, which doesn't sound like much BUT LOOK WAVE 10 IS HARD OK

I have a couple of small suggestions for improvement. First, that 5% damage boost upgrade feels like it does very little. With its current cost, buying it will probably lock you out of buying the more specialized ones, so I never really felt compelled to grab it. I think it could be made a bit cheaper without breaking game balance.

Second, I'd like a more flashy visual indicator when you root an enemy. The text makes it clear enough that it happened, but you could make it juicier by adding a unique particle effect and/or making enemies flash repeatedly when rooted.

Third, a music track or two would be super nice! The lack of one isn't enough for me to dock a star on audio since the SFX are so good, but a full version of this game should def have some sick tunes to jam to.

I could definitely see this being scaled up a bit and put on Steam for a couple bucks (a la SNKRX). Amazing work, especially given that you only used half the jam time.

Simple and fun. The sound effects are good too, and everything feels just right. Congratulations!

This is one of those game where you are like: Meh, alright, does not look like much, i am gonna play for a minute or so.... And you end up playing for an hour! :D Suprisingly fun, pretty difficult, i would say that buying health should be  a bit cheaper on the long run, but maybe i am just not good enough :D
I really admire game devs who create a great atmosphere with just a couple of colors and pixels, really impessive! Good job!

It rly was fun.

Easily one of my favourites of the jam!! I could see this being a really fun desktop application that you can play while working or something, like Windowkill or that Goose that steals your mouse. But the art and polish is really well done, I do think it could use some music though...

Really cool and enjoyable game :)

Cool art style and everything feels nice and juicy.

At some point it's getting pretty hard to avoid collisions. Thought if there could help a active ability (maybe with some cooldown, one per wave use or something like that.) that u can use for big waves that are about to overrun u.

Could see that game with some more opportunities to escalate and more juicy visuals and sounds.#

Good work on that! :)

This game is really satisfying to play! 5 stars for enjoyment for sure <3

A very polished, simple but very well crafted game with a multitude of levelling opportunities and a good feeling of progression and scaling. I am not very good at this game because I keep losing track of my mouse and getting hit but the game is always responsive and never feels unfair in its actions, i.e I always knew that I went wrong when I died. This is a well balanced and fun experience, great job!!

simple but cool graphics, cool color choices, and very readable 

Very good game! Engaging gameplay with very nice aesthetic. Cool idea to only use brownish colors. Very nicely polished with animations and sound effects.

Loved trying to find the right motion to keep my cursor form getting to close to the enemy while still aiming for the quickest swing. 

Really nice palette choice and feels very polished.

Enjoyed this a lot.

very creative

As it turns out, I'm really bad at this xD

Still you kept me hooked! Love the Mechanic!

have never seen a game with this mechanic. great job

Big fan of the visuals and feel of the game! 

Very fun game! I have some feedback for you if you intend to improve this game.

Firstly, I'd like to point you towards  bit of inspiration. "Brutal.io" has some similarities to this game that you may be able to take ideas from. It'll also be where I get some of my suggestions from.

Some context about my gameplay: I got to wave ~9 I believe then died. Did 3 runs. 1st run was focused on upgrading bomb and bullets, 2nd and 3rd were focused on mace damage and base damage with a bit of bomb.

What you're doing well:

The game is very unique, in many ways. The mouse is the player, and the control scheme is purely based on mouse movement.

The UI is clean and easy to understand.

The game is quick to pick up and not overcomplicated, but at the same time isn't easy which allows a lot of replay potential.

Good mixture of enemies!

Ranged enemies subtly choregraph their attacks so you can know when a bullet's about to be launched.

I like the particle effects!

The sound effects are good, though the game is lacking some form of ambience/music (I'm aware you didn't add this though because of a time crunch).

Suggestions:

Some mechanics from brutal.io you might want to consider:

• You can detach your flail from your body to launch it then bring it back to you.
• Your flail grows in size with more score. In this game you could make a "flail size" upgrade.
• Additionally, the distance from the flail and the body can be adjusted. this is something you should REALLY add to this game. Some way, whether an upgrade, or using the scroll wheel, be able to dynamically change the distance of your flail to your cursor so you can do longer/shorter swings.

In general, the game would benefit from more upgrades to allow unique builds.

The color scheme isn't necessarily bad but you should consider a couple of different colors to make different enemies and your character stand out more.

This depends on the difficulty you're going for but it feels like healing is a bit too expensive. A tenth of your hp can cost the amount of an upgrade.

Overall, fantabolous work! Would love to see more on this idea since I always love unique roguelikes.

Had a whale of a time with this one! I love the palette used. I do feel like it would be beneficial to have the cursor in a different colour with higher contrast though. Things very quickly get chaotic and it's really easy to lose the cursor as it's the same colour as the moving projectiles!

Also it would be great to lock the cursor within the boundary of the game as you can move the mouse out of the gameplay box and the cursor just kinda gets stuck on the wall, instead of sliding along the wall as you'd expect. This makes dodging near the edges pretty hard and makes it feel a little unresponsive which is a shame.

The shop is really cool, simple and not overwhelming amounts to read. The upgrades were cool although it seems that the knockback one only makes things harder as you can very easily knock enemies into you just by clipping them, so I'd always avoid buying that one.

It would have been nice to have some kind of music in the game, even something subtle.

Despite this feedback, I really liked this. It's a cute mini game that perfectly fits the theme of the jam <3

Such a cool concept! Fantastically fun to play. Excellent job!