The message about items showing up next to the sword and having limited number of uses showed up a while after I had gotten the poison darts twice and figured out they were a limited quantity item.
I made it to level 16 before I lost my first life. I managed to get the life/continue option. I then used the menu button to pause and take notes, and wasn't paying enough attention, so when I returned to the game I pressed the button, which took me back to the menu. I would suggest adding a Cancel/Continue Playing button as well, instead of just the X, to keep playing as it is really easy to come back from a break if you used that to pause and end up back at the menu.
I restarted and was more willing to skip things. I'm not a fan of consumables, so I skipped all of those. I also skipped doubling up on most things, except getting certain ones I liked, such as attack speed up. This run I got close to losing around level 15, as I had not gotten much healing. Admittedly, I did skip many of the healing options in favor of waiting for the higher tier versions. I did have 1% Vampirism, which helped to sustain me. I finally got the recover 75 HP soon after, and then the + 50 to max HP, so that revitalized things.
The Cave Spiders were the one enemy that stood out as the toughest. I did so little damage to them, and clearly needed higher attack. I really did not like when they showed up. Though it was a Mummified Zombie getting a crit of 52 that took me out on the second play. I was at level 19. This time I lost the spin to continue.
The game was fun. The controls were simple, yet the gameplay was solid. It moved at a good pace, though things were fast enough that I didn't spend as much time looking at the enemy art/animations. Some things were not immediately clear, but through playing it was pretty easy to understand everything. This was a nice submission, and really fit the theme well.