Sure, but I'll need a link here. The button in the game doesn't work.

Edit: Turns out I can drag the icon into my web browser, that worked.

I'm having the same issue. Launch the game, I get this; no machines at all. I've zoomed out, panned around, there's just nothing.

Metroidvanias aren't really a genre that needs or benefits much from multiple endings, so I don't consider this a loss at all. What matters is we get an ending, and this makes that more likely, so that's awesome!

Seeing those strobing lights definitely puts ideas in my head for how you can use them to guide the player's eye, both towards and away from things. Exciting stuff!

This game looks like my kind of jam - the archery minigame in The Lab was the best one! But I haven't played it yet - I have an Index, and the game doesn't work for me when launching through SteamVR.

With that in mind, I'd like to help out with SteamVR testing, if you're still looking for testers. Currently, when launching from within SteamVR after adding it as a non-steam game shortcut and checking the "include in VR library" property, the game window comes up frozen on some kind of menu on the primary monitor. Music plays, but video is never sent to the headset. I also had to force quit the game through the task manager as other means were not working.

I wonder if Robert Picardo would like it, or maybe even contribute. Maybe I'm being silly and he already has, given the likeness. Really interesting project!

Really nice work, I'd love to see more! This was basically just one level, after all.

Such an uplifting update! Really happy for you and your partner, just a slew of good news! Good luck with the move and the new house!

Bug: Losing a fight can put you into negative gold; it doesn't stop at 0.

Since this is itch.io, I am obligated to let y'all know that butler is itch's official upload tool. The itch client can't download or manage games from Mega; please use butler! I linked to the butler documentation above.

Now, I'm gonna try this game out the hard way... heh.

Only played a little bit of 0.2.5 so far, before realizing I installed the wrong version as I got this in the lewd bundle a few months back. I have a few points of feedback for 0.2.5:

• Text fade-in for exposition and memory crystals is in dire need of optimization. The game runs at about 5 fps when text is fading in, so hitting X to skip the animation is mandatory if I don't want to wait a whole minute for one page of text.
• Esc both pauses the game and toggles fullscreen. There doesn't seem to be a way to get back to the main menu without closing and reopening the game.
• The tags specify turn-based combat, but from what I can tell, that's not actually a thing here. There are no "turns"; the combat is real-time. Both the enemy and the player can attack at any time.
• The lewd scene in the first area is actually available in 0.2.5 - the red crystal in front of the cave stays, but the hitbox doesn't. The player can just walk in and view the scene.
• For what it's worth, I feel like players should get that first lewd scene as a freebie. A preview, if you will. A taste. Before I remembered I got this through the Christmas lewd bundle and had installed the wrong version, I had basically no idea how good the lewds would actually be, and was pretty negative on the idea of paying $10, as the combat hasn't seemed at all compelling to me so far (it's much too slow-paced, and the enemies don't seem to telegraph their attacks at all).
• Regarding the tentacle throat-fuck in that cave memory, due to the silhouette of the tentacle seeming the same size as the tentacle and being very well-defined, it looks more like the tentacle is penetrating her tongue and jaw and pushing under the skin of her neck; it's kind of unsettling. Hopefully this can get another pass at some point to make the bulge thicker and less well-defined, so it actually looks like her neck is bulging from something going down her throat. Something to pass on to the animators.

Also, there was a time at the end of the Charlee store encounter where it stated feelings -1, but Charlee's feelings actually dropped by 3 points.

Edit: Was mistaken on one encounter.

Ran into an exception when choosing the "Bussin'!" option with Charlee in the store. It actually didn't throw this the first time I picked the option, but I backed up and picked a different option, then picked Bussin' a second time a good while later, but still in the same session. I don't know if that had anything to do with it, but that's what I remember about that interaction. Anyway, here's the traceback:

I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While running game code:

  File "game/locations.rpy", line 284, in script call
    call screen playerhousescrn
  File "game/cswork.rpy", line 619, in script call
    call timeskip from _call_timeskip
  File "game/cswork.rpy", line 623, in script call
    call timeskip from _call_timeskip_2
  File "game/locations.rpy", line 582, in script call
    call screen playerhousescrn
  File "game/cswork.rpy", line 621, in script call
    call timeskip from _call_timeskip_1
  File "game/locations.rpy", line 284, in script call
    call screen playerhousescrn
  File "game/cswork.rpy", line 619, in script call
    call timeskip from _call_timeskip
  File "game/cswork.rpy", line 619, in script call
    call timeskip from _call_timeskip
  File "game/cswork.rpy", line 619, in script call
    call timeskip from _call_timeskip
  File "game/quickscenes.rpy", line 6551, in script
    jump charleestore.storebussin

ScriptError: could not find label 'charleestore.storebussin'.

-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------

Full traceback:
  File "game/locations.rpy", line 284, in script call
    call screen playerhousescrn
  File "game/cswork.rpy", line 619, in script call
    call timeskip from _call_timeskip
  File "game/cswork.rpy", line 623, in script call
    call timeskip from _call_timeskip_2
  File "game/locations.rpy", line 582, in script call
    call screen playerhousescrn
  File "game/cswork.rpy", line 621, in script call
    call timeskip from _call_timeskip_1
  File "game/locations.rpy", line 284, in script call
    call screen playerhousescrn
  File "game/cswork.rpy", line 619, in script call
    call timeskip from _call_timeskip
  File "game/cswork.rpy", line 619, in script call
    call timeskip from _call_timeskip
  File "game/cswork.rpy", line 619, in script call
    call timeskip from _call_timeskip
  File "game/quickscenes.rpy", line 6551, in script
    jump charleestore.storebussin
  File "renpy/ast.py", line 1751, in execute
    rv = renpy.game.script.lookup(target)
  File "renpy/script.py", line 918, in lookup
    raise ScriptError("could not find label '%s'." % str(original))

ScriptError: could not find label 'charleestore.storebussin'.

Windows-10-10.0.22000
Ren'Py 7.4.6.1693
Duality v0.1.5b
Sun Feb 27 23:21:51 2022

Found two bugs. First, Serena's cowgirl scene has missing frames. Second, the Dawn/Serena duo scene throws an exception:

I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While running game code:

ScriptError: could not find label 'dawn_dawn_blow'.

-- Full Traceback ------------------------------------------------------------

Full traceback:

  File "scripts/sub/train/tDawn.rpyc", line 754, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/train/tNezuko.rpyc", line 635, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/train/tSerena.rpyc", line 691, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/night.rpyc", line 22, in script call
  File "scripts/sub/train/tDawn.rpyc", line 1023, in script
  File "renpy/ast.py", line 1752, in execute
    rv = renpy.game.script.lookup(target)
  File "renpy/script.py", line 918, in lookup
    raise ScriptError("could not find label '%s'." % str(original))
ScriptError: could not find label 'dawn_dawn_blow'.

Windows-10-10.0.22000
Ren'Py 7.4.8.1895
Jump Harem 0.10

Alright, I have a lot to say, so I'll get right to it. I will apologize in advance if any of this comes across as aggressive or harsh, because it's not my intention; I want this game to be better than it is, and I believe making a thing better requires an accurate understanding of its current state and where it's flawed. Some of that involves expressing when I got frustrated with something and why.

First of all, the bugs. I'm playing version 1.4.1, I believe the paid version. My player character (PC) is male, and have so far selected Flare and Karla.

• The first description of the lobby mentions "elaborate stacks of file cabinets towering to the ceiling" which is completely at odds with the actual artwork we're seeing when that text is shown. We never do end up seeing any file cabinets.
• Is the main lobby broken? It just shows Karen, no dialogue, and an A/B choice that does nothing. What's the point of leaving the lobby button enabled if it's currently useless?
• So many times, I end up buying the best room or changing stuff for a character, often even triggering their related scene the next morning, such as the room-changing scene, only to have later conversations proceed as if those changes never happened. In the case of Karla, the game refused to even acknowledge that the room had been changed no matter what conversation options I picked. I had to load an earlier save and wait until the conversation happened for that to work properly.
  • Recommendation A: If the player is not supposed to change things until the characters discuss them, especially if there's no code to handle this scenario, do not let them be changed early. Have them all disabled at first, then each conversation enables the relevant feature for that room.
  • Recommendation B: Fix up the coding to allow these to be done ahead of time, even if it means skipping conversations or playing alternative dialogue. If a player happens to have memorized the ideal settings for each character and wants to speedrun through them, it should be perfectly doable without causing a sequence break.
  • Addendum: The notes I took on this particular issue are... colorful. It felt like the game was expecting me to be as mentally challenged as the PC is - but more on that later.
• The 4th love scene can be accessed the day it unlocks, but will trigger automatically at the end of the day even if it was already viewed.
• After I unlocked Karla and put her in the room next to Flare's, the intro scene showed Flare's room type rather than the default room type. It was correct when I visited Karla's room normally.
• The UI seemed to show Karla as being at 4 hearts at first, though she wasn't.
• Flare replays her first couple of conversations once all her content is completed. This is a problem because those conversations are things like "Don't call me Miss" and "I'm obviously a fox". It's immersion-breaking compared to how it goes with Karla, where conversation becomes "You have a nice conversation with her" which is a good way of saying there's no story-related dialogue left.
• A significant amount of the time, selecting "General Discussion" does nothing, and I have to select it again for something to actually happen.
• Karla's meal plans are all mixed up. She's always talking about how she likes meat and wants meat, though her favorite thing is fish, just as an afterthought, but when I select the Meat option, the game says "lol eat it yourself that's the wrong food dumdum". When I went out on a limb and selected Pescatarian, which is by definition supposed to be seafood, the exposition on that result described... a lot of red meat and poultry, but no seafood. Karla even commented she loves all the meat but seafood is still her favorite, which is supposed to be what she got.
• The writing for Karla's sex scene with a male PC is inconsistent with the art. At one point, text describes the PC playing with her nipples, but she's still fully clothed. When the text describes her pulling the bottom of her suit to the side to expose her nethers, the art instead shows her fully nude.
• Level and Rep are completely broken. Ever since I maxed out the Rep the first time and unlocked Karla, supposedly leveling up, the meter never returned to 0 and has remained full this whole time, and my Level has also continued to display "Jr Researcher". I've done everything possible with Karla and advanced several days despite having nothing to do, even exceeding 5000 Rep, but nothing has changed. If there are only two characters, there should be something that tells me I've hit the end of available content.
• A couple of the conversations with Karla about her vertigo seem to be either alternate possible conversations, where one or the other should play, but not both, or they're playing out of order. In one, she talks about being one of those 12% of harpies that's born with vertigo, and it's like "Man, that sucks, I'm sure we can research a cure," but then in a subsequent conversation, the PC once again seems to have no idea that she has vertigo, and Karla tells him directly, like they didn't just have a whole conversation about it. Then they reiterated the research angle, but it's jarring to basically have the same big reveal happen twice.
• Typo: "By the might of our power of flight, none shall whether our gale!" whether -> weather. You weather an ordeal or crisis, whether you like it or not.

Now for other feedback that's not bugs but just things I want to mention:

• Is any post-fuck content planned? More dates, more research, more conversations? Right now, it's like the entire character stops existing the moment you fuck them, get promoted, and get another test subject, which is a big disappointment. I would almost compare it to the distasteful "hit it and quit it" fuckboy mentality, or the typical Hollywood "the movie/series ends when they get together" trope. Avoid this! Add more dialogue, more conversations after the affection meter is maxed out. More experiments! We're supposed to be researching, here!
• The room types need descriptions; the pixel art is nice, but purchasing a room is almost guesswork right now, and if one wants to take a role-playing approach, the Junior Researcher would definitely be writing a description of what the room should have in it for the work order.
• The relationship with Karla proceeds more quickly than I would expect. She talks about how her people tend to be monogamous, and it takes forever for her to open up about her serious neurological disability (!!!) yet she jumps this guy's bones after only knowing him for a few days. It's like these milestones are just getting checked off a list so we can quickly move on to the next girl. I would like to see their relationship be more of a slow burn, and also one where her disability is in her file but early on she shuts down emotionally when the subject comes up because she doesn't want to cry about it, rather than it needing a big reveal. Have some special events where they test various drugs the scientists came up with to see if they have any effect on her vertigo, with the potential for more shenanigans like the face-sitting scene. Eventually, as the medicines improve, she opens up to the PC more, and one day yoinks him up to the nest after she goes an entire session without feeling like the room is spinning, and they make sweet love together to celebrate.
• I cannot stand the player character's personality (good thing I'm sitting lmao). In most ways, he is the opposite of what I would expect of someone with his job title, lacking in intelligence, forethought, and personality traits other than "dumb cowardly doormat". I understand starting off with flaws so a character can grow, but this character is currently all flaws, except that the monster girls magically find him attractive in spite of everything else.
  • Several of his interactions with monster girls involve him asking about things that should have been in their file, which a halfway decent researcher would have at least skimmed over.
  • Knowing he was entering a room with a flying monster girl in it, but acting all confused and wondering if he got the right room, instead of immediately looking up when he doesn't see her, is not a sign of intelligence, and as a result, it's not funny when she jumps on him despite the scene being played for laughs.
  • Karla tells you her preferred room type, and the PC gets annoyed. What? It's literally his job to find this stuff out! And it's supposedly his passion as well, but stuff like this makes me question it.
  • PC just fucked Flare (and might be fucking her on an ongoing basis), yet for some reason he's shy around Karla? He seemed like a turbo virgin around Flare, so one would expect him to be riding high off that and be a lot more confident, but apparently he's back to being a blob when Karla shows signs of being into him. The most self-assured thing he does in the entire game is work his tongue when Karla lands on his face, and that had so much assertive, read-the-room energy it was almost out of character for him.
  • If you want the player to identify with the PC, or at least be able to put themselves in the PC's shoes, that usually means making them normal, reasonably competent, and maybe a bit shy the first time they get naked with another person. This PC is someone I can't identify with at all; his only redeeming factor is that he gets to fuck monster girls, and even that's more a consequence of his job description. I end up tolerating him to get to the porn.
• You seem to have a dom fetish, and that's fine, but I'd like some more variety than that. Three female characters in this entire game so far, and all of them take a strongly dominant role with the male PC, who as I said before is a complete doormat. I think it's better when the one being dommed is actually competent and sure of themselves but takes on the submissive role to satisfy the partner's desire to be dominant. It helps them feel more like real people and less like the confident one is taking advantage of or manipulating the less confident one.
• The game's version number is a bit deceptive. If there's only two rooms unlockable at the moment, out of what, 16? This is more like version 0.1.4.1 than 1.4.1. It makes it seem like there's way more content than there actually is. 1.0 is supposed to be a full release, where all the main content is complete; 1.4 would be several major patches and/or DLC later.
• The plot is really going with the Black Company model, isn't it? Karen has a terribly abrasive personality, and the PC just rolls over and accepts everything, practically simping for the company as soon as he meets her, when he's been given no reason to do so aside from being hired and then intimidated. It's not a good look, and brings up unpleasant memories of some of my own horrible former bosses. In that sense, I suppose it's realistic, but a porn game ought to be an escape from that part of life. Ever read the hentai manga about a Black Magic company? It's one of those with an obnoxiously long title, "Though Young People Recoil From Entering The Black Magic Industry, I Found Its Treatment Of Employees Quite Good When I Entered It" (and that isn't even all of it lol). Most of the presentation of this company seems to more closely resemble that picture of things, so Karen's harsh "shitty boss" personality kind of clashes with that. Making the player quietly sit in her office for half an eternity while she fucks around with some paperwork only to eventually reveal his promotion (which he should have been expecting anyway, the meter exists for a reason) does not work in her favor. Those are intimidation tactics; the subtext is "I pay you, I own you. I will make you sit here and do nothing for 10 minutes like a good little slave because I feel like it, and there's nothing you can do about it." It doesn't feel good, and it feels even worse that the PC sits there and passively takes it without complaint or resentment.
• The idea of time advancing continuously in a game like this doesn't seem to serve a purpose. I ended up just leaving time paused, having conversations, and advancing the day when I felt like I had done all there was to do. I think a better way of doing this would be to advance time for every conversation, by an amount based on what specific conversation it was. So far, none of the conversations seem affected by the time of day, so time of day should basically be used as a natural limitation on how much you can do in a single day, there's no need for real-time advancement.

Oof, that's probably too much. I do like the game, I swear! There's just a lot that frustrates me about it in its current state, and a lot that I had thoughts on. I really hope some of this this helps in some way.

The unfortunate problem with the art style is that it is perfect for horror, and I really mean that. It's like how Scott Cawthon's 3D art always seemed to turn out really creepy, so eventually he embraced that, and what resulted was a runaway success. Many of the darker moments in Superhuman send chills down my spine from the art alone. That's a powerful strength this art brings to the table.

However, the very qualities which make it work so well for horror also make it completely unsuited for lewd scenes. Many of the characters that are supposed to be very attractive plot-wise look disturbing at the best of times, yet characters react as though they're supposed to be good-looking. For lewd scenes, I often find myself mostly ignoring the given art and just reading the text while using my imagination (an often forgotten skill in these modern times).

Finally finished the story so far, which means I can say that you are an absolute bastard and I must have more. When's the next update?

Mia's smile must be protected ; . ;

Christie's is upside-down in the scene with her, when MC and his dad sneak into the strip club. There's probably other scenes as well, but that's the most recent one I've seen.

Dear god, what have I done? This is such a long post. I'm sorry in advance - for what it's worth, I do like the game!

It's a very good start. Others have already voiced some of my concerns with the current state of the controls and platforming (coyote time, midair actions, etc). I do have too many a couple of things to add, however:

The most critical bug I encountered was during the boss fights; twice I encountered an issue where my character stopped responding to left/right directional inputs. I could still jump and attack, but I couldn't move. This always happened right after getting hit, and forced me to return to the menu and reload, so I assume whatever function prevents movement during the hit animation isn't properly returning control in some edge case (read: button-mashing). I played with a controller.

I don't know if it's a bug, but even after making a successful parry, there's a pretty significant delay before I can parry again. This is a problem when attempting to parry a hail of multiple projectiles close together, in which case there's a good chance a second projectile close to the first may either hit the player or need avoided before it can be parried, and this doesn't feel as satisfying as it should. If the delay is intentional, there's no visual or auditory indication of when the parry is available again, and the timing isn't related to the animation, so it feels arbitrary.

This is a big accessibility thing: text and controls need to be highly readable, at least optionally. Right now, it's just somewhat readable, with some letters barely so and some only resembling what they're supposed to be, at least in the pause menu. Controls also don't have color to them, which can help sometimes (the Y prompt on interactables could stand to be yellow, as it always has been on classic XBOX controllers). Mark Brown of Game Maker's Toolkit fame has a lot to say on this subject.

In checking on this, I found another bug: The spawning of at least some hazards is not paused by the pause menu. Pausing in the lava zone where fireballs shoot up will hide the existing fireballs, but more new ones will spawn and fly up after a second or two. If the player happens to have paused midair, these new fireballs can actually hit them, cause damage, and send them into the stratosphere! Who ever heard of dying in the pause menu, right?

For the controls, using Y to advance dialog boxes and select options doesn't feel right. The conventional scheme is A to advance and B to go back, so this will work against many players' muscle memory. Remappable controls would make this a non-issue, and also make the game more accessible for, I dunno, folks who play with one hand. For reasons.

There is at least one instance where selecting between options in the dialogue only allows the down input on the d-pad and not the up input.

Lastly, I would say the small tentacle animation in the first zone just isn't very dynamic. If it's a placeholder, it's perfectly fine, but if not, I'll go into detail on what I mean. The character's face barely changes throughout, and there's very little movement overall. The best animation exaggerates movement to sell what's happening, but this feels like almost nothing is happening. The whole tentacle ought to be pumping at the end, sort of like the classic "bulging garden hose" in cartoons, not just a tiny little bit next to what's inserted. There's some odd stretching with the ankle that's on the ground - just let it lift up! Make it look like the tentacle is completely holding her up, and the leg not being directly grabbed is just along for the ride, scrambling around for footing and sometimes lifting off the ground entirely.

I think that's about all I have to say on the game itself. Last thing I'll comment on is the itch integration, which is pretty bad. Is there some issue with using butler? I happen to agree with its documentation that says installers are the worst. I just want to hit Launch in the itch app and see the game come up, not click through an installer like it's 2005. Does GameMaker do some weird nonsense that requires its installer be used for the game to work properly? I understand if that's the case, though it would seem like a risk for the longevity of the end product.

I hope this all doesn't come across as negative; I know how critical early feedback is in game dev, and I want this game to succeed!

It can't seem to be installed through the itch client, unlike the previous build.

Thanks for keeping us posted. Remember to take breaks and drink plenty of water!

What's with the locked door in the first area on the 3rd level (Egypt?) I never even saw a key anywhere and I'm not finding one anywhere in any of the levels. No idea how to progress further.

The walls of text are a painful slog to get through on desktop. Separate it out into sentences, give it a lot of padding away from the edges of the screen (especially the left & right edges), increase the font size, boost the contrast some more, and throw in a function for reversing to previous dialogs in the event of a double-tap like many VNs do (such as the mouse scroll wheel), and this becomes a lot more playable. In its current state, I'd just be skipping all the dialog, and I don't think it deserves that.

Played it for the first time today. In my view, the biggest priority right now is the controls. Why does looking around require clicking and dragging instead of just going with mouselook? Why do we have to hold a button on the keyboard to aim and then right-click, rather than what every PC shooter made in the last 15 years did and hold RMB to aim and LMB to shoot? Why can we not move while aiming - are you going for a Resident Evil "fight the controls to fight the enemy" kind of thing? Either way, it's not fun in its current state.

Second thing I want to hit on is the enemy encounters. There's no feedback on whether the player can do anything about what's happening once they're being grappled. Pressing R shakes the screen - is that struggling? Does it do anything? Is it supposed to? I have no idea, and that's a problem. I've furiously mashed every button on the keyboard plus the mouse and it seems to make no difference in these grapples.

As others have said, pregnancy resulting in a (very, very, very delayed) death/game over is a wasted opportunity, a fun-killer, and a very punishing mechanic to include if it can't be purged and the enemies are this hard to deal with. Literally one encounter with just the wolf thing makes her pregnant, and due to its turbo fuckload of HP and (apparently) zero ability to fight back and get away from it once it grabs her, it's basically a killscreen - and after the tentacle makes the pregnancy meter go away, that delayed killscreen becomes invisible. That's a problem. If the tentacle is supposed to remove the pregnancy entirely, that's a little more acceptable, but still a wasted opportunity.

So, I can't seem to download/install this at all through the itch.io client, I have to download it through a browser and install it manually. Is that normal?

Three things. First, I'm getting almost no sound for anything in the game. Just dialogue scrolling and advancement, but not attacking, dashing, jumping, getting hit, saving, getting boned, any of that. Is that expected? It seems strange that these wouldn't even have placeholder sounds.

Second, I'm getting crashes after leaving room #3, the one with a lot of guards, if all the guards are defeated. What, was I not supposed to do that?

Thirdly, for the enemies to not only hurt you when you touch them but throw you way back at the same time, when you have to get close to attack, is incredibly frustrating. You're going to get hit just by trying to run close enough to hit them or dash around to avoid their attacks. Throw in having only 3 hp and it makes me want to just not bother and go play something else. It's not the fun kind of challenge.

I would HIGHLY recommend replacing the death-touch with an actual melee attack of some kind. A shove, a punch, a timed/telegraphed proximity-based energy blast, something other than "get thrown across the room the instant one pixel touches the enemy".

Until such a change is made, I feel like I have to cheese many of the combat encounters (such as by attacking through the floor) if I want to see the story without pulling my hair out, and that isn't as fun as it could be.

Controller menu navigation is a bit troublesome in some parts, easily fixed if you set the B button as the back button, as is standard in most games. The upgrade list, for example, requires you to scroll all the way to the bottom of the list before you can get to the back button, unless you have a mouse in arm's reach.

Edit: Oh, you literally mapped it to the Back button. At least that's a thing.