Thank you so much for such a great and comprehensive review!
For distinguishing archers from melee enemies, I think it's actually fairly easy to do by the distance to them; archers have a large "dodge space" in front of them.
I did have health power-ups planned to be scattered around, but I could never find the right visual and sound effects to make them look and feel good, so I ended up scrapping them.
To add more variety, I thought about making the level multi-tiered, giving the player some route choices during the run, but that would require a significantly more complex level generation system and a way to evaluate the future route.
I also sketched out moving rocks that you would need to jump over or slide under, depending on when you approached them, but I looked at them and decided they were too complicated for such a short and simple game. There was also an archer high up on a rock, shooting from there with no way to kill him, but he ended up in the trash as well because he didn't seem very interesting.
In the end, it seems like I didn't really want to complicate this game too much, haha. I don't know how common that is in game jams.
Regarding the controls, I can't really say much. I'm an avid PC gamer, so I just went with the spacebar + mouse controls that I'm used to. Leaving only mouse controls (making it more mobile-like) never even crossed my mind, because, well, I'm a PC gamer! Plus, precise timing and confident control are so important in this game, and I feel like drag movements would make that nearly impossible and often frustrating.
I'm very glad to read your review and thank you!