The theme implementation is really bad. You should not just put the theme into the story and call it a day; that's not how game jam themes work.
The sword system feels really unresponsive and there were multiple instances where my attacks didn't register. I couldn't managed to complete even the first level because of that. Also the enemies like to jump under you and launch you upwards which is not ideal.
Here are some ways you could improve the game overall:
- Add knockback to both the player and the enemy when hit, so the getting stuck thing you mentioned doesn't happen anymore.
- Make the UI less cluttered. I literally have no idea why there's so much random text on screen.
- If you make a pixel art game, make sure everything is pixel consistent. Because you used third party assets, this made your job much harder as you scaled up certain sprites. You could hide the issue with a pixelation effect.
- The enemies should either move slower or faster than the player, never at the same speed. Idk why but it just feels wrong like that.
- You can add a ton of juice to this game, like screen shake, hitstop, more flashes, a bunch of particles etc.
- Static camera follow makes the game feel like it was made by a beginner as it's a low effort solution to a very important aspect of the game.
There's probably a bunch of other things but I already said enough. Get to work because this game needs it.