I played twice. My first time I got to wave/round 3. The second time I played through wave/round 10, then intentionally lost, as it was too easy and getting repetitive. I was often waiting for the next enemy to spawn with none on the screen. I found the shooting enemy bullets to make them yours very powerful. I got that along with increasing my rate of fire, and that pretty much was all I needed. After that I mainly focused on minimizing the curses, favoring spike traps, and making the enemy bullets bigger, as they then benefited me. I think the gift/curse mechanic is neat, and a decent way to let the player control the increase in difficulty, though clearly some gifts are more powerful than others.