Paradigm

Did you read the blurb?  This is a student project made in a few months.  They didn't have time (or any budget at all) to polish things up or make it more interesting/engaging.  They just did a quick fun idea and managed to make a respectable prototype.

There's a saying about throwing stones from within glass houses...students should be encouraged and provided with useful and respectful constructive feedback precisely because they're still learning and making the useful mistakes NOW so they don't repeat them later on.

As someone with moderate modding and game design experience, the 'switching' mechanic could likely be traced back to some early computer and/or 8-bit games.  That said, there's nothing inherantly wrong with reusing a mechanic in a different game.  There are all the games that use 'cinematic slo-mo' ever since the Matrix movies did it.  Those movies in turn were inspired by Asian kung-fu movies and cinema as well as Ghost in the Shell (the anime not the terrible western bastardized movie).

It would be far more effective to distill and precisely pinpoint which aspects of the game are objectively poor versus subjectively poor.  Then, weigh those against the time/budget considerations of a student team working on this as a group project (and juggling other studies/assignments/projects at the same time) as well as the freeware price point.  One has to be somewhat more amenable to students and freeware, IMHO.