Great point! I should have made it clearer that the dash prevents damage by having you dash through some kind of damaging wall that you otherwise couldn't pass or something, rather than using it to get across a gap! Great call-out! :D
And hearing that you prefer the alternate control scheme makes me super happy I decided to add that in during the last couple hours of the jam, haha! Maybe that even would have been better as the default control scheme! :)