What a joy to play, that was cozy as heck! You've clearly put a lot of care into your sprite designs and story. Loved the animations for the player character, and the designs of the various monks and creatures. The mushroom king's sprite was especially a standout for me. I'm also going to need a whole spin-off about Brother Jimbo, because how did a former mob boss ("who wants to know?") wind up as a monk lol?
Generally I found it clear how to progress in the map, and your layout made it easy to see points of interest to come back to. In terms of player movement, it would be nice to have more fluidity/control, but because the world wasn't very challenging, it didn't bother me much (i.e., it didn't cause me to die in frustrating ways). My only other note would be that compared to the way the green and blue keystones worked, the red one felt a little disconnected, since you (I think?) relied on nearby rats to chew through the vines, and so you could activate the red pedestals before getting the red keystone itself.
Huge shout-out to you for the amount of effort you spent writing unique dialogue for every NPC...like, WOW - and let me tell you, I talked to every living being. I lived for the non-stop mushroom puns and THE TOXIC MUSHROOM...perfection XD. Also, doubling back to talk to that one hard to reach flower, just for him to yell "POLLINATE ME"? This is the content I crave haha.
Awesome work! <3