In general game's difficulty follows two contradictory maxims: 1. the game should get more challenging and 2. the player should get more powerful. Incarnation lightly pokes at these tried and true laws by offering a game where you get weaker to provide a real sense of difficulty, is what I'd say if the contradiction above hadn't been solved decades ago by simply making the further levels harder to counter any player growth.

This makes Incarnation less of a subversion and more of a inversion. To handle the players drops in power Incarnation has to make its later levels easier which makes it's difficulty curve basically the same as any other game's just getting there in a slightly different way. Rather then getting stronger with the levels getting harder at a faster pace to create an overall more difficult ending Incarnation has its levels get slightly easier as you loose power at a rapid rate so it overall gets more difficult. Even the thought process of choosing which upgrades to give up is shocking similar to the one of choosing upgrades in a normal rougelike.

I could be a little more forgiving of this slight failure of premise if the the controls actually let you move and attack independently, but tying everything to a mouse when combined with your eventual low range and weak attack mean you have to take damage in later levels. This fact was seemingly known by the game's designers who have filled the later levels with tons of spare healing items which kinda destroys the fantasy of being made super weak when you are just expecting to tank everything.

Still this is little more then a stupid thesis which is avaible on steam for a low price if the concept interests you. I think there is just enough to make it worth the 1~ playtime, but I also think it ultimately fails in its premise.