I love this game. For some reason this game keeps me coming back. I just got a high score of over a million and it was very fun grinding to get there. The only reason I died though was that my damage was too low compared to the boss' health. Every attack I made resulted in a miss. Nothing I could do would deal even one damage. I think that if your attack is too low to do any damage then you should instead have a 50% chance of doing 1 damage. This at least makes late-game boss fights possible, even if extremely hard.
Oh nice, first one to break the million barrier! 🎉
Yeah the game does have some balancing issues (and bugs too). Eventually the enemies will just get so much defense that you can't damage them (unless you have the quite overpowered ignores def skill). Of course the game does need to bring runs to an end at some point but that is indeed quite a lame way to lose and doesn't feel great. Something like what you described (could even be more generous) would make it at least feel doable even though it would be very though and unlikely.
I think I'll do a patch at least fixing the most glaring issues (which I'm pretty sure you've encountered too) after the jam rating period is over. The "auto fill" can ruin your solutions kinda and the boss drops sometimes weirdly glitch out and make stuff disappear from your inventory. Might as well do some nice to have tweaks and balancing things while at it.
Thanks for playing! ❤️ Glad you like it and good to hear that it has something that pulls you back and enough replay value.