Color me extremelly impressed, that was a very wild ride.
The amount of content here is surreal and it's quite well polished the whole way throught, and the fact you did it all from scratch makes it even more unbelievable to see. This is definitelly the most impressive and well made game on the whole jam when it comes to the technical side of things, there's no doubt on that.
Like, for real, this game, it is, freaking, HUUUUUGEEEEE, and like, yeah, that's... mostly a good thing, actually. The actual map is super varied and you're never 100% lost, because the gwaphics and level design are all fairly memorable from room to room, and the whole map is actually really well designed in general.... Or at least I thought so on the first 40 minutes or so of playing it. It's funny really, everything feels like this should be a perfect entry, but there was a point were things started to get.... a little annoying to navigate. And the moment I felt like I actually needed to use the map you provided on the game page to progress was the moment I knew everything went downhill.
First things first, the fact you actually felt the need to leave a map on the game page should already have been a signal, but it is REALLY hard to find out where you actually need to go or not. Honestly, the SINGLE BIGGEST offender of that is the path to the sliding skill, after you get the hammer. Pretty much every other breakable wall on the game is actually fairly intuitive to tell where they are, wich is good design, EXCEPT the SINGLE most MANDATORY one!!! Like, really, how did that happen? why is every other breakable wall a little offset from the rest or on spots that looks like entrances, but the one wall that should be the clearest of them all just looks like a perfectly normal wall on an absolutely random room with nothing remarkable about it?? That single wall just felt so evil for absolutely no reason lol.
Also, there's is no indication wheter or not I'm near a save point or a warp room before actually encoutering them, so they're all extremelly missable, since they might as well just be another normal room with more enemies. This makes for some moments where the player might feel like they've been wandering around for hours withouth ever finding a single place to rest because they just passed by all the chekpoints. their positioning on the full map is actually very descent, they're very fairly spaced from each other, but there should have been something on the scenery to indicate wheter or not you're near one of them.(Especially the ones on the final area because of all the softlock transitions issue... Imagine you finally reach that place, but due to a bug have to reload your save all the way back to the skeleton boss at the catacombs because you didn't enter the completely normal looking entrance that led to the save point at the final area?)
Also, something that also made traversing kinda frustating was the combat. It's actually super smooth and super fun at the beggining of the game! But as you explore further annd further the enemies just gets more and more damage spongy.... I guess that's on me for not finding every single sword upgrade, but hey, that's fine, we have fireballs!... Until Fireballs don't kill them either and I'm out of stars.... Also, some enemies are just kinda bullshitty, like the those little worms you find on a few rooms. They're literally too low on the ground to hit with any of my attacks, and there's a room on the water area where I am literally FORCED to tank hits from them since I have to slide below rocks with worms on the floor that I have no way of killing or avoiding... And also, who had the idea of making tankier specter paparazzis?? The ones on the catacombs took 2 hits to die and that felt so perfect for this kind of enemy, so you can imagine I was not happy having to deal with things following me at high speeds that took 5 or so hits to die at the final area... (But hey, at least I could fireball those!).
(Kind of unrelated but still related tho, I really like the detail that Skeletons have this secret weakness of dying instantly to the hammer. It's never mentioned on the game, but I think it's fun this way, and it's actually quite intuitive, since you know, bones are just as hard as walls!)
Oh well, all of that aside, that's a really amazing game.... The art is super good and consistent, and I love all the scenery and decorations and different tiles sprinkled all around, and the music is also very very good, I love them all, altought there's this tiny detail that the music restarts from the beggining everytime you pause lol.
Also, an OPTIONS MENU??? That's peak!!! I really appreciate that! Specially the input configurations! It's just always so good to have those, even on jam games I'd argue it's super worth it to spend some time to develop something like that, and mobile controls even? Now that's just overkill lmao, but heck yeah, the more the merrier!! xD
Save files are also always very appreciated, altought I did play the whole game in a single sitting, wich was probably detrimental, a good chunk of my frustration with exploration might have been mitigated if I actually took a break, but oh well...
Also spoiler alert, but the ending? The princess was me. I'm sorry but I can't afford to see Sir Regal hitting a slime 10 times without killing it in front of me again x)
Don't get me wrong tho, this is probably one of the games most likely to win the jam despite my negativity on this comment, I'm sorry for the rant x3