Thank you for your feedback and comments about things!
"though frankly I think the rooms themselves are too big and sparse." That I fully agree. A problem I ran into was that I didn't have as much time as I realistically wanted, mainly because of poor time management. So a lot of the rooms weren't filled with items and stuff as I wanted. Especially since the combat system was basically not developed. And for that reason, I didn't want to force the player into using that system, since it would just make more players dislike the game.
"It's not awful, it's rare I encounter an RPGMaker game with truly bad combat" To give you an idea, in this version like 95% of anything you do combat-wise is like default RPG Maker stuff. Default as in if you make a project, that's the data that's loaded in. I can't remember how much I modified since I suffered a loss of data when it crashed. (Sometimes when you think you are safe and stop panic saving is when it crashes.)
About the levels. Originally I was going to have around 5 to 10 rooms per layer. However, when I tested it I got room 2 about 6 times in a row. With how the random generator works, with rooms 1-5, you would have a 33% chance to get that room. (3 exits / 9 exits total) I figured at that point there's no way to have that little room without it getting boring, since for me, if you got multiple rooms back to back it could easily get boring. And if you're wondering, even now I'm still struggling with how to implement or even have a system to prevent the player from going immediately back. For me, I adore making levels. I find it fun and entertaining to just put on a video in the background and work on them.
"Or perhaps just have fewer, smaller rooms per layer." From my personal experience, you either have a few big maps or many small maps. Trying to get a few small maps to work in my strong opinion doesn't work without a lot of effort. I was actively avoiding a few big maps because that's what basically everyone does, so I went towards the many small maps. And you would be correct; when I posted the game, I put the tag rougelike on it, specifically for that reason.
"I like that you went a bit experimental with it" Thank you for that comment! Another huge reason why my time management was bad was simply because I had no idea what the "core" idea of my game would be until like the 28th. I would rather not make anything basic or that has already been done, because for me that doesn't fit the theme of the jam. I've had the mindset for a while that the reason something doesn't exist could be simply because it's difficult to do it right. And this was definitely one of them, lol.
"And frankly I don't know that I found this to be a "so bad its good" experience." Being brutally honest, I'm not surprised. I didn't have a good concept of those types of games. I do have a concept, yes, but not anywhere near enough to try to make a game based on that idea. So, why did I join this jam? One main reason why was simply because I put a lot into others opinions about things, especially when it is something I've never done before. My self-worth is basically near 0 most of the time, so part of the reason I haven't finished and published a game before is simply because I grow to genuinely hate it. I felt like I could post to this jam not worrying if people saw the game as "bad" because that's kind of what it's going for.
I also interpret the idea of "so bad its good" as a diamond in the rough. Where the game is bad in numerous areas, but you can see that its "soul" shines brightly. That you can see the creator genuinely cared about the game and was trying their best, but they just didn't have the skills. Some of those lean into that quality and make their "badness" part of the charm. But yeah, I do agree with you that it probably doesn't give a "so bad its good" experience, or at least not strong enough to say with certainty it does.
If it isn't obvious by how long these responses can get, I can and will type a lot of stuff, lol. So I'm hoping when I update the game after the voting period of the jam ends I should have a lot more dialogue and story in basically every area.
Thank you for the feedback again, both negative and positive! It was wonderful reading them, and hopefully you'll have a good day/night!