There's a lot to like in this zany space adventure. The power ups are fun, the bosses are ridiculous, the levels feel like a metroidvania, and there's voice acting!
As I started to put together my thoughts to write up a comment, I found that I enjoyed this more than I realized. There's actually quite a few things that were messy or cumbersome as I played through, but by the end I'd sort of forgotten about them in the glow of a good time. So kudos for that!
For the sake of future improvement, though, here are some things that didn't really work for me:
- The damage push back seemed to get me stuck in a few hit loops—i.e., I'd get hit by something, bounce, but the invincibility would seem to time out before I had a chance to get myself out of danger, so I'd get hit again, repeat until dead or significant chunk of life is gone. Maybe less push back or more invincibility frames would help? Also landing on bubbles seems to extend the hit stun. Super frustrating in a few places (I'm looking at you, Massive Martia!), just sorta of mildly irritating in others.
- The moving mine carts of cheese gave no indication why they'd be dangerous. That one was just surprised more than anything.
- As other have said, the dash probably works better as its own button. I think why it doesn't work great in platformers is that we often find ourselves making minute adjustment to position to make a jump or set up a timed sprint, but doing a little *tap*tap* suddenly makes you dash across the room in this game. Works in fighting games fine, but maybe not so much here. Also the dash sometimes just goes insane and I end up flying all over the room, haha!
- I agree with dan.collins.dev that the one-way/drillable platforms were difficult to see in areas.
Again, though, I had a blast by the end despite some flaws here and there. Great job—thanks for the good times! ^_^