This is really good, I was hooked. I would recommend maybe ramping up the difficulty a bit sooner. I started to get bored thinking the game was too easy. But shortly after, it got way too hard!
I really enjoyed the combat. At first it was a little clunky, but after playing for a bit I really started to enjoy it!
Now personally, I would take this in a more traditional rougelite direction. After death, reset everything except for the shards (and definitely expand on that! Its a great form of meta-progression). Right now I feel kinda stuck, it got too hard and I have no building of my progression. On top of that, resetting the abilities would let you add new ones, and randomize which ones you get each run!
Your core gameplay is fantastic! Fix your pixels and put up a steam page, I think you have some good potential here.
