Holy moly thank you for such detailed feedback and I genuinely mean it, I'll try to answer everything point by point and apologies in advance if some stuff ends up sounding repetitive!
1. Absolutely agree, which is why combat overhauling will be our main focus in the next major update so we can improve everything you mentioned!
2. This feedback has also been brought up as well and we fully agree! This would be part of the "combat overhaul" update
3. Thank you for enjoying the design and the music!
4. Yep, fully agree! If you wanna read further on why the camera ended up feeling "zoomed out" check out one of my comments on the gamejam entry page, this will be another focus to fix up with the combat!
5. This was more a time issue than anything, the final non demo version of the game will have very distinct zones in all aspects, due to gamejam time constraints we didn't have time to develop more stuff further currently! Will be changed in the future!
6. This was also a very common feedback and we hear you loud and clear, expect this to be fixed in the next major update!
7. Thank you for enjoying the character movement, we are particularly proud of it!
8. Absolutely some version of this will exist in the full game, either a skip button or the cutscene only appearing the first time you battle with the boss!
9. Thank you for your feedback on the reaper! We'll do our best to adjust it so the fight itself doesn't feel as long!
10. This was sadly an inconsistency issue with the art, the fire and lava pillars have nothing to do with horizontality or verticality but they in themselves are different things and mechanics, albeit quite similar. Think doing away with one of them is something we might entertain in the future!
11. Thank you for enjoying the respawn time and checkpoints!
12. We understand and this was mostly another time issue where we didn't have enough time to properly introduce to players how they work, doors have nothing to do with saving but moreso buttons and levers, buttons persist after death and are used as 1 time things while levers don't, both of which can control doors!
13. This is a very cool idea that we'll think about! Thank you for mentioning it!
14. Oh absolutely we are with you! Those upgrades are actually placeholders and will be replaced with a much more intricate and fun to use and obtain system later on in development once we feel we are ready to focus on another major part of our game! We don't wanna spoil too much right now but it will add a lot of uniqueness and player choice to our game! Current upgrades are a result of a gamejam time constraint which was mentioned in some previous answers, god i sound like a broken clock!
15. Map is also planned to be very intricate and user friendly with alot of cool features, another result of having limited time to develop such a large scale demo!
16. Tying a limited resource to some exploration was a tough choice, and we hear you loud and clear! This will get updated so that it feels a lot less scary to use such abilities for exploration AND combat due to a lack of energy resource, so look forward to it!
Thank you for pointing out the bugs and we will make sure to squash em' in the next update!
Milivoj Stankovic - Game and Level Desinger for Project Null