Thanks a lot man. I did intend for the possibility of being screwed in a boss fight with no mana and potions. Like I've said in other comments, it was more of nudge to the player to level up their alchemy.
I can't believe I didn't consider trickle mana replenishment. That would have probably reduced the number of complaints about mana consumption and lack of mana by a 1/3 or so.
I thought I placed the save points well enough, but maybe not. I think you're the first one that brought up that point. I know two of my save points are one room away from their respective bosses (the top right corner and bottom center of the map.) Maybe that first save is a little too far away from the first boss, but my assumption was that the player would spend some time building up a stock of potions in those initial areas where enemies and obstacles aren't hard.
I actually did have a shake animation w/ noise before the drop at some point. Unfortunately, I went down a rabbit hole trying to fix a couple things, and when that didn't work like i wanted I did a hard reset on my git branch. I didn't realize I hadn't pushed that before the hard reset. It was on my list to reimplement, but I never did.
Thanks for playing my game and the feedback. There's been a lot of constructive notes that I'm taking to heart. Also, big shout out to you for implementing the colorblind mode on your game!