Wow! How polished! The art and character designs are quite goofy and charming, and the mechanics are mostly well-conveyed (except for the true extent of prayer's power. I only found out about prayer healing on my last run at the final boss). All-in-all, a good time!
Definitely feels like one of those old-school games where the main strategy is already knowing where you want to go and what you have to do, which the game is short enough to accommodate. As much as I really like the design and flavor of the secret character, I avoided doing that on my winning run. In my personal estimation, the damage you "have" to tank to get the [special item] is just not worth being able to keep an extra charm for the final boss.
While I liked most of the difficulty balancing, I think enemies being as unpredictable as the player and prayer might have been a bridge too far. It could just be a writing and framing issue, but with how much standing around the enemies end up doing, a monoclops doing 8 damage in 4 turns carries a distinct flavor of "unfair" in what is a relatively fair game. It's not really "Ah shucks, I missed!" so much as "Ah shucks, the enemy became uncharacteristically intelligent for an extended period of time!"
The soundtrack is nice and creepy, and the sound effects do a great job conveying the action. That said, there's a weird audio imbalance between the intro / ending music and the rest of the game; I got jump-scared by the louder ending music after winning!
Fantastic! Great work!