Thanks for the in-depth review!
Beginning - early game definitely needs some improvements and fine tuning, and the lack of tutorialization is a real problem. Will definitely make the necessary adjustments for a post jam update!
Ending - the lava flow idea is really cool. At first, I wanted the player to be able to delay the calamity and to make sacrifices in order to do that, but the project was already very ambitious so I settled on a defined time frame. So this idea is really cool for that!
Cheers!