Really liked this one! Unique theme and atmosphere, solid art, decent enemy variety, frequent upgrades. Loved the initial big drop onto the big sea creature in the bg, good stuff.
Would've liked to see some background art to breakup the plain color of most of the rest of the screens though, even some very basic silhouettes would've been nice. Could use some more vfx to juice things in places, even just reusing the bubbles from the dash in some other spots could've been good. The actual attack was a very good and comfortable size though, which was appreciated lol.
Getting the characters appearance upgraded was pretty cool, although understandably they were looking a bit cluttered as things went on
I felt like i saw "snail on a very tiny platform" a lot. I get you only have so many tricks, but that's all the more reason you need to be careful about how often you use the ones you do have, imo. I'd have preferred a few of them just get taken out.
The squid feels very tanky for the kind of enemy they are, and how they're used. I can't effectively hit them in the air more than a couple of times since they get pushed away, and waiting to parry several more attacks is not great.
The slowdown on walking thru bubbles seemed a bit egregious.
I could not finish it right now, though. The last powerup (the dash) that i picked up left me at 10 hp, and i definitely needed more than that to take on the snail-squid staircase. I was willing to grind for health a couple of times, but it was too grating to keep doing. Some proper save points that healed you would've gone a long way, there.
Still, one of my favorites that i've played so far! Good job on the whole.