Overall a really solid entry. The art is cohesive and the exploration and level design is good (definitely gave me minecraft vibes with the squares and lights). The music didn't really fit the "feel" of the game - maybe something more aggressive with drums. The combat is a bit shallow and seems like there is no way to not get hit or block/dodge but maybe i'm just not skilled enough (this was the hardest part my 7 year old son had a rough time with too). I think the enemies might be too difficult because I often find myself coming back to the crystal only to then have the monsters respawn and it created this bad gameplay cycle. Maybe if the levels were more linear so you were not backtracking as much that would play well with the monster respawn. These are all very easily fixable and sort of nit picky overall its a strong entry.
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Sorry you had a bad time with the combat, it's difficult to properly teach. Basically when an enemy has an exclamation point above their head, you should move out of the way, usually to the side. Then you should attack the air to get them to come into your attack range. This results in a combat loop that feels somewhat like a dance.
I'll try to make a better tutorial in the future. Thanks for the feedback, it helps a lot.
Ah ya definitely not intuitive for me. I wonder if having some other mechanics like a block or parry would make the combat feel like it has more interesting choices rather than you need to 100% dodge to survive long enough to not respawn enemies. Right now it feels more like punishment then interesting choices and rewarding. Its definitely a tough thing to balance and get right.