thanks for playing, I appreciate the feedback.
as the other anon said I'll try to implement a method to show where you're hitting, I'll reduce the small mushrooms amount or give them longer lifetime.
the arena is screen-sized because it allowed me to focus on creating more basic AI patterns for attacks and ignore enemy movement, as a beginner. it was a compromise. it's not full screen size to allow for enemies to retreat to safety and use projectile attacks, or have "huge" enemies not be off screen(I can't afford zooming out, that'd ruin the pixel art)
The whale has a shadow appearing to warn you when it's rising so the player is supposed to notice that after dying, I think. for the other attacks I plan to add some other alert method so the player is better prepared.
C was for guarding which is currently scrapped because I couldn't find a reason why it should be used over dodging, instead thinking that creating fun patterns to dodge would be better.
limiting dash and jump to cardinal directions was intentional to encourage player precision, regarding attacking backwards that's probably true(also awkward to draw), I haven't implemented it because I was planning enemies to mostly be in front of the player but with my current enemy design you're punished for being higher up in the arena which isn't fun.
the gamefeel needs tightening so I'll work on that!