Oh wow, replaying it now using the attack makes the game much more interesting indeed! I really liked the dash mechanic and the blur it leaves, and the metroidvania aspect is actually nice, I liked how you can enter the "walls" with the "minime" upgrade, and the attack is useful but also slightly strange because the enemies teleport back when hurt, especially for the stalkers since they sometimes teleported closer to me which seemed a little bit unfair, pehaps they should just stop in place for a second instead of being pushed? Not sure.
But now having progresed much further until the first boss, the game seems way cooler, also the map seems huge which is awesome. So I changed my previous voting to reflect all this.
And thanks! Took me a while to make the thumbnails, so its nice to know someone found them enticing.