Well, my interest is that a game combining platformer, puzzle, and hardcore elements could be an excellent idea. Sometimes, strange combinations lead to nice concepts.
If you're doing something RPG, that's fine; the only advice I could give you is to use resources from the Unity Asset Store to build your game, or perhaps GameMaker, which I believe is the one that provides tools for RPGs.
I'm happy to hear you liked the core-loop as is. I'd be interested in keeping it the same, but there should be some more content or meta progression so people don't get bored even if they are not progressing. I'll think about how we could resolve this issue. If you have any suggestions, please don't hold it back (unless you want to create a similar game).
GameMaker is an interesting suggestion, I haven't thought about using other engine than Unity as I have several packages/assets already and I'm used to the ecosystem. Anyways I'll look into that engine as well, a bit of an environment change wouldn't hurt!
