Thanks for playing, I totally understand the timed sections can feel punishing they were designed to challenge players under pressure, but the game is definitely beatable with a bit of persistence. That said, I’ll be adding checkpoints after the jam to help ease the difficulty curve a bit.
As for the music, it ended up being my lowest priority before the deadline. Given the limited timeframe, I focused on making sure the gameplay worked from start to finish and that there were no game-breaking bugs. While I don’t believe a soundtrack is absolutely necessary for a game to be complete, it does greatly enhance the experience, and it’s something I plan to explore more in future updates or projects.
Regarding the setting, yeah, it’s not meant to be a typical dream world. It’s more like a DnD-style virtual world that people want to explore into, perhaps it’s already corrupted beneath the surface. That’s why things become more surreal and chaotic as the game goes on. Unfortunately, you’d have to beat the full game to fully understand the context behind it all.