i came to this expecting nothing and found myself pleasantly surprised.
i really like the gimmick of the gameplay loop, and i feel if this got a proper overhaul the result would be pretty unique.
the game as it is in its current form is fairly unbalanced, as proven from the fact not a single person seems to have cleared it (going off of medals).
the main offender is probably the extremely low chance of actually landing into the final world, since it's only a 6%, and to even get there you have to go through literal hell itself at least once lol.
one solution would be to increase the chances of getting to circle 4 slightly every time you reach a circle 3 world.
the second problem is the high variance caused by the sheer randomized nature of the gameplay: there's no real difference between easy and hard mode, since all it boils down to is getting lucky by landing in good worlds, and especially not ending up in the 3rd circle 7 times in a row.
the controls are somewhat slippery, so it's real easy to just slam into enemies and take a bunch of damage; the fact you can bounce off walls if you walk into them is especially annoying.
ironically i found myself more comfortable moving with the actual slippery modifier than normal controls, and that's saying something.
the rate of fire is also a problem, as enemies spawn at a much higher rate than you can shoot any of them down. their hp also seems inconsistent, as sometimes i can defeat the same enemy in different amount of hits on the same level (regardless of world rules).
it ultimately boils down to how many screen wipes you manage to luck out in a row, but it would be nice if there was something like piercing already built in, like in the sniper level.
boosts stack, which does help if you somehow manage to survive long enough in a single run to get more than one of them, but the overall control of your character still ends up being somewhat poor.
i also learned that pressing R at any point resets all your progress (awards, worlds album) , so heads up on that.