I have to comment because I have been playing this game for a while now and haven’t given any feedback. LOVE THIS! Games don’t need to consume 9000000 hours of playtime to be fun and satisfying. I feel like you played a decent amount of Castlevania because you have captured a lot of the fundamental feeling of playing those NES games. The "attacking slightly early" idea - can't say how much I like it and miss it in modern games. The whip IS slow, but if you learn how to manipulate it you can take out multiple enemies with one strike. The boss IS a bit of a puzzle because that’s how bosses are SUPPOSED to work. Once you figure him out you can own him readily. It should always be satisfying to take down a boss and this is a good example.
Saw this game on a site called KBHgames and after playing it I had to hunt down the source profile - which brought me to itch. Wouldn’t change a thing except for the obvious…….we would love to see MORE!
As far as the audio crackling - I am playing on the Itch site via Google Chrome browser and the only time the audio crackled was when I was progressing and the screen was scrolling. As long as I stayed still and moved around in the same area the audio had no crackle. Hopefully that helps. It’s not a game breaking problem by any stretch.
Thank you for the fun and challenging gameplay.