A Fool's Errand Update

TL;DR at the end, although please read point 3 if you're really interested since that's the most criticized point.

I just wanted to try out this devlog feature admittedly, but I thought it'd be helpful to share what I have in mind for the next update to AFE if anyone is interested, and I'd love to hear if there are any more additional suggestions anyone has in mind.

To get the big thing out of the way, The images I posted are part of a thing I'm trying. Kinda inspired by Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, I wanted the enemies to grow more "Damaged" as the fight goes on, I thought this would be good for the game since one of the most consistent compliments I got was on the art, and since there's not too much to make, I like the idea of leaning in on it more.
In other updates, here's what I have in mind

1. Most Important Update: Communicating to the Player
Since I found a couple of people getting stuck, or having trouble with certain puzzles, I wanted to circumvent that by giving the player more hints and telling them things I didn't before. Such as how  many floors there are, one of the main challenges of the game was meant to be time management but it's really hard to do that when you don't know your goal. To help with communication, I also wanted to add in a key item that you can use that will remind you of your current goal, only really useful earlier in the game. I also wanted to include a more in depth tutorial, I didn't do this in the original game because of time and not wanting to make the player feel stupid.
2. Larger Scope
Since the game is no longer a jam game, there are a couple of things I wanted to do with the game that I didn't get the chance to do before. I wanna develop on the story more, since originally for the save rooms, I wanted to add in a cut-scene that develops the character of Edward Matthews. I also wanted to change the time that the player has to go into the dungeon, and how long the dungeon is. My plan was that instead of 7 days, you'd have 14 days, and instead of 50 floors for the dungeon, you'd have 80. For the dungeon, there will be 30 Floors of the Depths of Denial, 30 Floors of the Void of Anger, and 30 Floors of the new, Core of Depression, since I was missing a stage of grief. Also some missed opportunities will be taken, for example there are items that are like the "Ace of Spades" and other sorta cards, and I wanted to make some of them usable to find Secret Paths and whatnot. Also, I nearly forgot, a couple more songs to flesh out the game and make the final boss less anticlimactic.

3. Huge Balancing Reworks
Honestly, I'm kinda stumped on this one. The judge very harshly said that the game was too hard, but I also have received a number of criticisms saying the game was too easy or that the boss was anti climatic. The only idea I have was maybe adding in a sort of assist mode that uses the judges suggestion of restoring your HP & EN whenever you reach a save room, but that kinda defeats the purpose of the day system, where time management and knowing your limits is very important. Either way the balancing is gonna change big time since I messed a lot of things up, the shotguns didn't do much damage despite costing more, the camo armor was supposed to give you 15 defense but didn't, and overall it was very janky.

4. Bug Fixes
This is hopefully self explanatory but I wanna fix stuff like the spikes not giving the player invincibility frames.

In conclusion I hope anyone following the game is excited for this and if you have any suggestions or think some of these changes are misguided than let me know!

TL;DR:

I wanna add things to help the player not get stuck, the scope will be increased a bit since I have more time, the balancing is gonna be overhauled since it was the most harshly criticized, and I'm gonna do the standard thing of fixing bugs.