thanks for checking it out!
im suprised that you touched on so many of the things i was considering
the sound effects actually arent normalised perfectly. higher pitch sounds are going to seem louder even when its the same volume as a low pitch sound. so thats something that i needed to adjust but didnt have time for.
actually it used to be more of metroidvania. there were more powerups and bosses during development but i cut like three quarters of the content i had made in favour of making this first area presentable. the next area actually had obsticles to get players used to diagonal dashing controls. its something i thought about for the reason you said. theres a chance id go with 4 directions instead of 8 because i wanna make it that you have to dash into orbs (will adjust hitboxes accordingly). so it would depend on whats funner when testing basically... probably 8 still. i also thought about how much better the dashing would be on a controller but aiming is going to really important for this game (already is because of combos) so would have to try it out and see how well that works.