I love the blocking idea, will give it a spin!
One thing I've noticed is that enemies attack you along a vector that doesn't point straight at your character, it's more pointing at the top of the character sprite, so it makes melee combat a bit hard, disjoint. Have you noticed that at all?
Keep up the great work! I'm going try and get more involved testing and reporting bugs. I'm also a very experienced programmer (not with GameMaker per se, but with C/C++, JS/TS, etc), so if I can help with anything I'd be glad to. :)