Wow, thank you for the detailed feedback! Completely agreed on all fronts.
I think ultimately, the combat just needs to be rebalanced to be a bit more forgiving in the player’s favor (and having that damage feedback). Enemies having less health, quicker snappier combat, and more player health drops would really work in our favor. We set out to make Cult of the Lamb-style combat, and I think as we tuned everything to feel balanced, it all started to get a little bogged down.
Great note on the overkill! “Display Enemy Health” was one of the features that we ran out of time for despite it being pretty critical. Being able to know how much overkill you could (potentially) get from an enemy is IMO the biggest missing element from the game right now.
Damage feedback, knockback, and stun are a few of the remaining combat mechanics that didn’t quite make the cut. We had an ugly debug damage flash that we turned off, but looking back we should have just left it on. We may not do a big post-jam update, but we’ll probably at least patch in the damage flash :)
Thanks again! I’m happy you enjoyed it!