This game is not 160x144 - all the background art is, but the text is being rendering at what I think is 2x.
That said, this one is pretty rough, mostly because of the controls. I beat it once, and played it several more times until I managed to get a no-hit run, and ran into the following bugs/issues:
- Tile based movement is fine in general, but for this game where the enemy attacks don't have tells and you have a dodge dash that sends you in the direction you're facing with no ability to turn mid-movement, this is the wrong choice IMO.
- Without clear patterns and with all the delay on your attack, dodging the enemy seems more up to chance than up to skill. You can dodge most attacks, but sometimes it'll just launch a fireball/ + blast when you're too close or in the middle of an action and unable to react.
- Since you can't really dodge with it, I didn't find a use for the dash besides closing in right at the start. It failing yet still locking you into the animation if you use it too close to the wall also doesn't feel good.
- Attacking seems to be on some sort of state timer that doesn't check what happens if you're already attacking, which causes a couple of bugs.
- Mashing attack once the first one fires off lets you get off four or five attacks in a row, which does not seem intentional.
- Getting interrupted (I think this is if you charge during a dash, but I'm not entirely sure) causes the character to freeze and not respond to any inputs.
- The attack flash is not a perfect cue - you can attack a few tenths of a second before, so you're stuck either letting go early and whiffing entirely or waiting longer than you need to to actually strike.
There's nothing wrong with this game conceptually, but so many issues added up with the mechanics that it just didn't hit for me.