Thanks for playing the game and the extensive feedback. I'll try to address each point in order.
- The issue for jumping isn't an issue with collision detection. The problem originates from where I shoehorned in variable jump at the last minute. I noticed the bug pretty soon after it was introduced, but it felt fun for me because I noticed that it usually gave a little lift when I felt like I had executed a perfect jump. I thought about fixing it, but there was still a lot to work on that I decided to put it on hold and never got around to fixing it.
- I did think about adding a life indicator, but I made an assumption that it would make sense to the player that they had three attempts after dying once or twice and didn't implement it. It may have been fine, but with rooms like the one right before you get the dash powerup, were just too punishing where you would just get chained into death.That could have been fixed by changing how hit stun worked.
- I agree on the grunt sound being completely out of place. It was a placeholder from one of my previous games (that's actually me grunting lol) and I just got lazy and didn't bother changing it. There's always a few items that could be easily changed within minutes that I just blow off at the end because I want to finish in time and before i burn out. Hit sound was definitely one of them. As for the jump noise, I think you're the first to comment on it. I'd have to play it again to see, but that never stuck out to me as a possible issue.
- This was my first time making real bosses and not beefed up versions of normal enemies. With the Automaton of Fun, the issue with him never hitting is a combination of the raycast that detects the player being too long and the timing of his windup and swing. Both bosses also had collision detection issues due the complexity of changing the player's shape, collider, and activating each shape's respective hit and hurt boxes. I know there's a better way to do it now, but during the jam, I was playing it by ear.
- Not adding an indicator was another instance of me just being lazy.
- I'm surprised about your issue with not being able to see the platforms. I'm colorblind, so I tried to take that into consideration when choosing the colors. Personally,I think my biggest mistake color-wise was changing the enemy colors. In hindsight, they looked better before I changed things last minute. You can check out what they looked like on my instagram and decide which looked better (or worse).
- I addressed the knockback/stun issue above, so I'm not going to reiterate it
- I really love maps and I feel that they're essential for metroidvanias. So I did my best to try and make sure it was always clear if you got lost or had to backtrack a little bit (there weren't many instances of backtracking though.
Whether you played it in your browser or downloaded it, the issue would be the same other than a little less lag when multiple things were exploding. And don't worry about the huge list. The more feedback like this I get, the more I can improve. I haven't played your game yet, but I will by the end of the day. I've spent quite a bit of the rating period, doing work I put off during the jam :S