very glad it clicked!
I very much believe games have "souls": not literally, but oftentimes they are the ones who tell you what they should be. a reason why this game really turned out the way it did is because of the harsher aesthetic elements that I experimented with, and I found that the game wanted to be like that. so, i went all-in for better or worse.
ill prob talk about this in the post-mortem, but a big goal of mine was to make a game that placed / appealed to a larger audience. this jam skews casual and lighthearted and I knew that. i very much made a "sickos game", but even though I did the exact opposite of what I planned, im very happy with the result nonetheless.
truthfully, im not someone who really excels at curbing my design impulses to make more accessible experiences. For better or worse, i make what I would like. not that im incapable of making a difficulty curve or anything, or balancing levels, but i feel just a liiiiiitle bit of cruelty (or a lot) makes for a memorable experience. most of all, I really view the more dissonant and off-putting elements of my design tendencies as part of my artistic expression.
so, tl;dr hearing it clicked for you really made my day : )