Love the idea, as it has major potential, but damn if the game isn't anything but an uphill battle.
You're outgunned with your slower fire rate and slower movement after shooting, and using your tongue is a risk that's very exceptionally weighed against you given the lack of invincibility frames coupled with their "shoot the millisecond they can" attitude and bullet count to back it up.
While you are granted the ability to delete projectiles in two ways and while yours can ricochet, the deletion is mirrored in a way that's honestly far more effective than your methods just by sheer volume of chances for the enemy to do so where the bouncing bullets risk attracting enemy attention and putting you in far more danger than before.
AI could also be a bit tweaked, as the turtles at least have a very annoying method of "charge until low health, but then constantly run while shooting to prolong the fight" with their choices given the above advantages letting them do exactly the latter without any response. Red counterparts are the same, albeit with more sporadic firing to make things more unpredictable when you can only really abuse the AI to gain ground.
Mobility could help to balance this, while keeping theme. Perhaps a basic jump to let you just bypass walls and go over bullets could be a start - it'd help with dodging the bullet-based foes, but melee focused enemies could easily still be a threat by disregarding this in different ways.
Perhaps changing the tongue from a sword-esque slap to a grapple type of deal could be fun, letting it reach further both for enemies and traversal over different terrain in the future at the expense of not letting you shoot during it? If you want to keep the current tongue, maybe give it an alternate fire where you can shoot out enemy bullets you've licked up that have different properties? This is just spitballing ideas, so make of it what you will.
Despite my complaining, I still like what this game presents on terms of the main idea and enemy's theming. I'd love to see your future work - just keep balance in mind; it's good to try and beat the player, but they still need to feel like they can actually take on the challenges given.