I love gamejams, among other reasons, for the ability to experiment with game design: best case scenario you’ll have something cool to build a full game upon, worst case - at least you didn’t spend too much time on testing it :)
This game, definitely closer to the first case! I’d say there is a lot to improve and balance, like
- ink tool tests the ability of doing tiny dashes (but the main goal is just to give player the ability to mark “special spots”). Sinse the game is tile-based, maybe give a player a fixed amount of “ink splashes” so they care more about strategic placement and not saving additional pixel of inkbar?
- with springs it’s a bit chaotic when they lead to a new area at the top: you haven’t seen it, it’s not covered in ink, so you just take a leap of faith and stop moving afterwards, lighting a match (and either finding yourself at some platform at the top or maybe somewhere deep down with no idea of how to get back because there is no sense of distance you flew while being in the dark)
- don’t know if something can be done about it (or this is intended), but after a couple of restarts I could complete the first level with just a match or two (and a good lightning)
- for “blind” part to work better, the platforming should definitely be fine tuned to perfection, so you could always predict and calculate how far you’ve walked/jumped by just looking at your character, and not only timings (like, speed up/slow down animations could already serve as a good indicator). But even the timings part should be a bit more predictable and controllable.
In any case, I had a very fun time with this game, and it’s very cute and coherent. Good job on finishing it in 48 hours!