I appreciate the detailed feedback!
There is a balance we are still working out with enemy visuals which is especially relevant in the dump tileset.
Most of the enemies use colors already present in the tileset because it makes sense for the enemies that live in the dirt to be the same color as the dirt, so we are relying heavily on the motion of the enemies to make their presence obvious. Certain enemies like the cats rely on their coloration to blend in before pouncing, which puts some pressure on the player to keep alert.
Some ships are definitely larger than others, but we've tried to make sure that all areas are navigable for all ships. There are a few spots with especially-tight squeezes that will probably be getting minor updates in the coming weeks.
Different tilesets have different ways that they express the shapes of their terrain, and the tight, claustrophobic feel for the dump is definitely intended. As more tilesets move toward completion hopefully some of that feeling of being compressed too tightly will be alleviated \o/
Enemy health scales with mission difficulty, which can make longer caves feel like the slog you mentioned without backup firepower. The gunbuddy powerup adds an autonomous drone to provide support during missions and you can have up to five of those at a time. We're still working on adjusting their drop rates so that they show up often enough to be relevant but not so often that they make the player useless. For a taste of what they feel like though you can punch ACUTEKILLINGMACHINE into the cheats menu a few times.
I'm glad you like the art! Some of it's still kinda' rough but we're constantly iterating.
Thank you for trying out the demo ♥