itch.io

The game is fun to play, don't get me wrong.  In its current state there are frustrating mechanics, but nothing that can't be fixed.  In my opinion to fix the issues I've been having:

1. Give the player intangibility after escaping a grapple, not the enemy.  This will help prevent re-grab loops, and give the player a window to fix their mistake, especially against tanky enemies, or enemies who attack from odd angles.  Oh, and be sure to switch the submit button to a different button than "attack" nothing feels worse than accidentally getting grabbed mid swing, when you're just about to attack again, and accidentally deleting yourself at full health with no checkpoint nearby.

2. To adjust player DPS, make it so that your attacks are a three-swing cycle, rather than an infinite loop of A→B→A→B.  I've noticed you have a windup swing to deal double damage after a brief charge.  Have that as part of the three-swing cycle. A→B→C! This would also leave the player open briefly, fixing the DPS problem.  They can also choose to only swing twice and back off.  You can still have the charged up power swing, letting players wind up to use it right away, and have powerups tied to only that type of power swing.

3. HP drops.  Make canisters and breakables 100% drop for HP pickups, but have the full heals randomized.  If you want to keep the random drops, make it a default that enemies drop HP unreliably.

4. Have a split between minor and major checkpoints.  Ones that fully heal you, and another that just saves your progress, and current health without healing.  That way you can have those midway through difficult gauntlets.  It isn't about the difficulty of dealing with individual enemies, its the iteration time in doing so.  Having to fight through a gauntlet after gauntlet just to get back to where you were feelsbadman :(

5. The mage enemies that you include need to have a telegraph of their spell.  I know you have the icon of their spell they're casting show up when they cast, but the indicator of their spell is useless if it shows up at the same time their actual spell does.  An enemy that causes that much disruption should go Telegraph → Delay → Execute.  Plus, to make them less of a problem, have it so only one of those "fields" can be active at a time, but the duration of each field is shorter.  This gives a gap for the player to approach, and react to the spells as they come out.

Gameplay critique out of the way, now for suggestions:

I love the fact you include melty digestion in the preferences, it's probably one of my all-time favorite kinks.  If there's any way you could draw out the animation of her melting, it'd be even better.  Right now it feels a bit too quick.  If anything, it should go through multiple stages of the stomach window closing in, then opening up again, her getting progressively more melty, repeat a few times, before dissolving completely.  This, of course, is skipped entirely if someone turns off the preference.