Artifacts

Holy crap, this game is incredible!!! I'm floored and had more enjoyment with this than I did with Axiom Verge, which I couldn't even continue playing for as long. The Soul Light is downright awesome to time, haha. The diversity of the enemies is commendable, too, especially those spiky bipedal creatures whose bodies don't explode right away after being incapacitated. It was a pleasant surprise to see the wizard bombardier run away when you reach his back, too. You're definitely no newbie to Metroidvanias!

Specifically, was I right in seeing the dive-bombing blue bird-like creature possessing a blackened, downed enemy's body to make it continue fighting?! There are SO many good things going on in here, like the web effect when getting hit by spiders, etc.

Some thoughts:

• Any save station, such as the fountain under the merchant, would be nice, so that having to close and reopen the tab wouldn't cause you to lose stuff.
• I'm not sure of why the poison arrow deals so much more immediate damage than the fire sword, at least for the leaping blue worms. I thought it was kind of backwards, personally.
• It'd be nice if jumping/falling enemies take damage from spikes, too.
• The spike-destroying artifact should make a note that it only provides a chance to thwart injury from spikes. I still got injured sometimes when landing on spikes with it.
• If the map could be expanded to take up the screen with Tab or something, that'd be nice (maybe through an artifact?...). I was not able to find any keys to any doors as I didn't know where to go...
• If Escape could be used to mute the game and pause action, that would be nice, too.
• It'd be funny to have the big suicide jumpers make a surprised-grunt noise if they get hit by an attack mid-leap. They currently stay silent, and sometimes I've hit them in mid-air, diverting their ground destination.
• I ended up picking up three max-health mushrooms and there was a fourth and I couldn't pick it up even after killing all nearby enemies. Do you have to kill all enemies in the entire room or was there some other constraint? Displaying a "cannot pick up" reason would be nice, in the way that the locked doors state that a key is required.
• Make levitation auto-stop once you grab a ledge.

I really think with more polish, this game could be expanded into a hit commercial Metroidvania., if that's not already your goal. It's really Hollow Knight-ish. It just needs a full world of lore and such.