Yeah, I picked up Sword Of Ditto last month on Steam, and I there's some really nice aspects to it, but I can see why it'd piss people off. It's trying to be a rogue-lite where you lose everything on death, but that aspect doesn't feel as well-executed as other similar games. When I die in Spelunky, Vagante, or Dead Cells, I usually want to try again and see if I do better... in Swords Of Ditto death just makes me feel like quitting out of boredom.
The game has potential, but I think they needed to spend more time refining the balance of the permadeath mechanic and which things you need to collect all over again on each run.
By the way, Elysis has a tumblr now where the latest progress is being shown off. It's looking really good:
https://blankthevidya.tumblr.com/tagged/elysis