Thanks for trying my game out and your very in depth review :D
Yeah the goofy animation is more of a case that i tried to have my own take on a multi weapon system where the player had the same animation. mostly inspired from some Castlevania games on GBA where if i remember right, they seemed to have something like this where some weapons where just literally the weapon sprite poping in rotating and then be gone.
I generally like when small details show up in games so i tried to have some here too, thus the window light XD
Ah the wizards, couldn't balance them properly, and i see they have definitively become the most hated enemies next to the knife skeletons, sorry about that :( hopefully i'll get some balance right on a jam release someday :p
Apologies for the music as it's not my best work, especially since i goofed up and forgot to mention the mute button on the game page and haven't edited it yet cause i'm not sure if page changes are permitted by rules or not while judging is still in progress ^^' but yeah you could mute the music with M or Select on a controller this whole time.
Yeah my ai skills are still pretty weak, especially since i don't really know yet how i could make some that would be a bit more reactive to the player's actions and not just the environement, but then again still learning so i'll get there eventually. And i feel this is most of what makes the combat bland here, although i'll take good note on your sugestion of some way to dodge/roll, cause this could spice things up a bit as well.
Level design i tried my hand at backtrackable maps for the first time here, although i did wanted to have this aspect not be a pain, but failed. I think i should have probably put a stopping point for the high jump way earlier than the guard quarters to have a bit less of a long trek back to the upgrade :/
The later levels i think are mostly bad as i was close to the deadline when making them and didn't feel all that inspired as what i could do with them especially since players would reach these spots with all upgrades.
Healing was planned, but couldn't implement it in time as i lost a lot of time fixing issues with bugs and i had to publish early to not miss the deadline due to scheduling stuff.
Not the greatest level designer that i can't argue at all XD Glad you liked the teaser of powerups and weapons as that's something i've been trying to have almost everytime there are important items in games i made cause i know that that's the best way to guide players towards "cool stuff" they might get curious on how to get.
Happy you seemed to have fun despite all the issue present, cheers :)