Oh my god! I really appreciate the in depth feedback. I cant explain how much that means to me!
It's fascinating that having to constantly restart and retry the game still kinda just... fits the theme lol. Because after you submit the game, it does indeed just loop back to the start. But I'm honored you gave it so many tries!
You're totally right about finding a mechanic first though. I was too indecisive the first two days so kind of just threw this together at the end because I was so stressed out about nothing working. The goal was to submit a game no matter what. For the future though, I will definitely try and be more organized!
Regarding 2D however, I have no gift for art. I'm a developer at heart. I would've benefitted from a team where we can share expertise but given the last minute nature of this jam for me, I couldn't do that.
I'm glad you read the whole pause menu lol. It was just me doing stuff on the last day as an excuse while I should've been adding music to everything :)
Thank you so much for playing and providing feedback!