I tried and failed to play this game a total of 3 times before the 4th time sucked me in. I don't know what it was that felt off about the game to me - I think my brain was just trying to figure out what this game actually was and every time it subverted my naive expectations my brain just rejected it? I don't even know why I got sucked in the 4th time. Something just clicked. I think it was something about the combat in the game that frustrated me at first but once I got the hang of it I fell into a very nice rhythm.

I really liked it now that I've finished it! I honestly had no idea where this was going or what to expect up until the end, but it was fun to explore, come up with different strategies for each area (grind on the floaty guys, always, always run past the poison guys, bank on strength as much as I can), but I guess more than that I just liked how both gamey and idiosyncratic this game was. Like I'd recognize a lot of things (shops! enemies! leveling up!) but everything felt like you were asking "what if this thing worked this slightly different way?"

Especially with the shops and the power/health upgrades. I hit a wall early on and decided to just grind on the floaty guys until I could get really powerful, but items getting more expensive at the shops definitely made things interesting on that front. I also didn't realize that I was removing the angels from the game completely when I was using the emotion spell on them, so I inadvertently destroyed any way for me to get more money so I was unable to grind my way out of the clown angel fight. And man, what a fight! I hate that guy so much, but I really like the way the fight was designed. I usually hate boss fights, and I hated this one too, at least at first, but having repeated the fight so many times it was pretty cool to see just how many different strategies you've managed to counter/react to with their move set.

Anyhow, this is getting long, so all of this is just to say that I really enjoyed the game even if I'm not sure I'm clued into the design space you're working in. Great job and thank you for making this!