Thanks for playing and for the detailed feedback!
You’re right about the top-down perspective — the attack direction limitation was one of the issues we ran into.
A small forward dash during attacks is a really good idea and would probably make the combat feel much better.
And yeah, the dead pixels were definitely too deadly.
We designed them to be a core part of the game's challenge, but we probably pushed the difficulty a bit too far.(Sorry for this)
Really appreciate you taking the time to write this!