Thank you for the thorough reply! You bring some good points. With the next release (which is right around the corner) I have fixed some fairly major issues and the game should feel more responsive.
-Enemies turning into other enemies has been mentioned a couple times, but I don't know what causes this yet.. I imagine I'll have to go over the enemy codes thoroughly (or rewrite them) to fix it.
-When you are in range to pick up an item you can see the key pop up above it, that means youre in range to pick it up. This is a new issue I've not heard of before nor encountered myself so I will keep an eye on this.
-The idea with the hearts and the bar is that you can charm enemies to engage in animations with them at your own will. You get hearts by collecting them or attacking enemies. It requires 1/3rd of the bar full to be able to use, at which point the bar will begin to flash occasionally.
I may need to add some more explanations to this function in the game..
-The suggestion to cancel animations is a good one. I haven't thought of this and I may implement it in the future.
Again, thank you for playing! ♥