Thanks for playing and the feedback.
This game has been pretty quick to work on. This update was about a week of work for the kids, and about 2 days for me as I only joined in after the Hungry update. We absolutely want to finish Hungry, but may need to consider if this style is where we are better suited currently. Our first ever jam game, Recharge Your Rocket, was also more of this style.
Without being able to continue after defeat it can be tough to get through until you learn the dungeons and enemy patterns. There is also a bit of trying each and seeing which is easiest for you and your play style, so you can unlock things to make the others easier. In some cases you may find a certain tool you really like and want to partially complete certain dungeons to get the upgrades before going through to complete any of them.
Drat. I saw the projectile issue while testing something else and forgot to fix it or put in a ticket. It will be fixed in the next update. The projectiles are always spawning pointing to the right, which can cause them to collide with things they shouldn't before they get rotated to point where they should. I'll take a look at the boulder as well and see about improving the visuals and collision detection of these. Maybe we will have the boulders use a smaller collision shape for detecting walls to despawn so it can better go down paths, while still having a good size for detecting enemies.
For this game we are currently working with an asset pack, so the kids just scaled the images up when they wanted bigger enemies. We haven't decided if we are going to stick with the asset pack or make our own. Likely it will be a hybrid to not delay the game while we try make all the art.
We will think about the HP bars, probably making it a difficulty option. They can be nice, but sometimes it is also nice to not know exactly how much HP they have/have left. For the games that inspired this one HP bars are not as common, but making a modern game they ado tend to be preferred.
I need to do more work on the enemy path finding/navigation. I also want to add some logic to make them less likely to simply walk into a pit, especially around the corners.
I'm not sure on collecting food, but we do plan to add your classic healing potions/spells as an option with the ability to refill somewhere. The kids did the large pile of food at the start, and I'm not sure what I think of it. We will probably reduce that, and instead better balance the food/healing throughout the dungeons. The core gameplay is inspired by classic (S)NES games like Zelda.
Thanks again. This was great feedback!