Thanks a lot for your feeback! A few notes:
* the delay on dodge is a bug. The dodge triggers on the button release instead of press. It'll be fixed in the next version.
* indeed the attack animation doesn't properly reflect the actual hitboxes for now (you can see the attack hitboxes with F2) I didn't have time to make attack or dodge animations for all 8 directions by the deadline, so I stuck with right and left.

I made the enemy duplicate on death to see how many players can face at once before it becomes too hard to manage, so I can balance them, and decide how many of those the player should the player face at once at most. Judging from the result, I think you won't have to face 3 or more of them at once until the latter stages of the game.

Worth noting that those enemies compensate their aim with your move speed, so you can change direction after they start charging their attack to avoid it without having to dodge.

I'll work on gamepad support, also I'll experiment with light masks that use dithering instead of smooth, so it blends better with the pixel aesthetic.