The juice is there ! I know it's really hard to make melee combat fun, but I think you did a pretty good job ! But some things made the game a bit frustrating to play for me. I'll list the things that come to mind that could be improved, in no specific order :
- I almost quit right at the first screen, because the cutscene (which is pretty cool btw) was played every time I died and wasn't skippable, which made the process of learning how to fight the robots really tedious
- I found the robots a bit too strong at the beginning, maybe because the level design puts them at their advantage. I don't think I could have beat the game without the tips during loading screens, which give insight on their behaviour that is not obvious at all and could have been conveyed better ingame (show a battery indicator on the enemy maybe, that reduces every time the enemy shoots, and depletes at the third shot ?). I found them way easier to beat (and a bit too dumb maybe) during the boss fight
- Spawning lots of robots during the boss fight was not the fun part, it was way funnier to dodge lasers. And the boxes were a bit annoying there, because the physics was a bit wacky
- The platforming physics is pretty tight, it's really fun to jump around, but the level design was a bit too linear to make it really shine
- The intro and outro texts was way too long, you can be sure 90% of players won't read it, which is too bad, because it is where the link to the theme is explained...
I highlighted mostly things to improve, but that's overall a pretty solid entry, I just like to give tips on how to make things more fun. Well done :)