First of all, thanks for all the feedback.
I'm not sure I understand the issue you're having with controls though. Arrow keys + ZXCV feels fairly standard to me unless you're maybe using an AZERTY keyboard which would mess it up. There is key rebinding to help with that though as well. I'd have to investigate supporting controllers on Gamemaker, because I haven't looked into it at all and not sure where to start.
I think I will change health burst behaviour to default to picking them up rather than activating them.
In terms of levels, I'm glad you gave such detailed feedback on them and I will be onboarding all of that as I redesign/remake levels.
The update I've been working on is more like a relaunch of the game, new tutorial, new ship and a new set of starting levels, including an overhaul of enemy behaviours. And yes, my initial plan was to have a story, won't be super story heavy and its pretty low priority though.
Thanks again for the detailed post.
Could be because I never played games like these on keyboard. I just found it hard to get used to, but that doesn't mean that your approach is wrong or nieche. What I'd like to change is what you did with Z and Shift though. Z (punch) only works at smaller sizes, so pretty much useless most of the time for someone who's constantly stuffed. Shift (dodge) however is a lot more useful, especially against ranged enemies, but isn't really where the fingers are positioned. There are 1-2 useless keys inbetween, which isn't ideal especially for something you'd like to use as a quick reaction.
I don't really see a point in the punch anyway as the kick/belly bump are pretty much the same in terms of attack area. Not sure if there are any combos you could pull off with both kick and punch, but to me the punch felt rather redundant and unimportant. Putting dodge on Z would make a lot more sense than having the punch there