I really enjoyed playing this game! Awesome gameloop you have here that actually hooked me so much that I wanted to play more at the end! However, I had a kinda frustrating start because, ironically, the tutorial part was the hardest for me. The soul was asking for a flower and I instantly uderstood from the tutorial that I had to check for recipes in the bookshelfs. For now everything's fine! Buuuut, when I read in the bookshelfs that making the flower required ANY type of color powder ("color of your choice") I went on to buy whichever color I found. That's when the problem started: My dumb self didn't realise I had to buy ingredients for the PINK flower and I kept trying to make the flower with the wrong color which resulted in the game telling me I didn't have the required ingredients. This went on for an emabarassing amount of minutes and I started to get frustrated, but I kept going because I insist on trying to play all games till the end and I quite enjoyed the idea here! Just after a while I went back to the soul and I read PINK flower which instantly activated my 2 neurons and made me understand that I need to craft the PINK one xD. But ye, I suggest you keep this part clear, I understand you may not want to handhold the players and that's actually really cool letting the players figure it out, however I felt this was misleading the player since the recipe says you can make the flower of any color and you can't make the item at all! I think the problem here is how you described it: The soul said Pink Flower yes, but the recipe saying you can do the flower of any color and then the game telling you don't have enough ingredients even though you have the two ingredients on the recipe list made it look like you were not getting the items at all! I suggest you at least let the player craft the ingredient in the cauldron and ONLY when you go to the soul is when you prompt the "Wrong Flower" warning with a dialogue. Something like "This is not the right color!" from the soul would be enough to fix this instead of locking it in the cauldron. Especially for a tutorial, this should be clear because you're teaching the main game loop to the player! However, after I got used to this, oohh the game was cool and enjoyable! I really wanted more! There's also a small bug I noticed when going to the right side of the level. I could climb the wall and almost move out of the scene, initially it looked like it was intentional since the spot is at the plant on the side which looked like climbable, however I quickly noticed it was probably a bug since there was nothing up there to interact with.
The game is extremely creative on the way you approached the theme, I loved the idea of helping souls move on. Really original idea and I loved the way it was executed! The theme fits really well with these!
Visually the game has good art. Simple but unique art the gives the game personality. However, I felt like it missed a few important things regarding feedback that may have compromised some of my gameplay experience: Interacting with items should be clearer. Everytime you approach an interactable object it should prompt something like a message or highlight with an outline to tell the player he can interact with it. This one is not a big deal, it just helps the game look more polished! The UI could use some more work in the shop as well. Everytime I bought items, the only feedback I had was the sound. I kept trying to check if I actually bought the item by going to my inventory. This is especially confusing when you are showing "0" in every item on the shop looking like the shop is completely empty. Also, it seemed like there was a currency? But the player never had the chance to get that currency and you could buy whatever amount of items you wanted. I suggest you removed this element of the UI since you don't have it implemented. It's a fun idea for sure, and it adds progression and a meaning for rewards for the player, however I feel like if you don't have that feature implemented you shouldn't keep it in the UI as it can get really confusing (which it did for me and I didn't think I was buying items xD). To keep the whole process even clearer, I would suggest to also open the inventory on the side showing your available items updating as you buy. Also you could add a little UI element that pops up wehenever you buy an item like "+1 egg".
Overall, I really really enjoyed playing this game! Despite having its flaws with clarity mainly at the start, I kept trying! And at the end, it was well worth it and made this flaws be completely overshadowed by the good quality of the gameloop and creative idea that ultimately gave me an amazing experience! I liked it so much towards the end that I was kinda sad the game finished so early! Really enjoyed the addictive gameloop but again, make the tutorial and UI clearer and the game should be a blast! And also: this was your first game?! Really impressive work! The above critics are just things I think you should improve later on to make the experience even better! So don't let those demotivate you as they are purely to help you! You have a wonderful work here for the first game AND in a game jam of 4/5 days! I couldn't make something so solid like this as my first project! Not even near! Congratulations on your submission!