Thanks for the feedback and for giving it a peachy play!
Yes, I can confidently say that most all of the issues encountered were for the most part exactly that "game jam constraints". We set out a very specific and defined scope for the game from start to finish and wanted to assure first and foremost that it was playable from beginning to end, not too hard, not too difficult. Unfortunately while tieing all the knots near the deadline the primary balancing tweaks were managed primarily on my end on the night before the deadline.
But with the numerics, actually the numbers are managed in a way where base stats that affect all sources (do not contain weapon names at the start) are % based, while weapons (katana, monkey, pheasant and dog) are raw numbers. The intent here was to give the player an option to opt for either percentage increase to all sources (upgrade the modifier) or raw number boosts to specific weapons (immediate power for just a single weapon/pet).
All this got a bit convoluted near the final stretch so we didn't have time to format the numbers to better represent clear stats. We had a UI setup ready to be plugged for the player to access via the pause menu to review all upgrades and their current values, again didn't get it rigged up in time and removed it near the end to not mislead the player with bogus static placeholder numbers.
As to attack speed vs attack cooldown. Surely are many ways around defining either in a game. Technically I'd say yes, Attack Cooldown may be more descriptive of the current attack function, given there is no windup to the attack, so there is no speeding up of an attack occuring technically. Attack speed would be closer to projectile speed in this case - the speed of the attack. But mostly I'd say this comes down to interpretation as to what is more accurate given definitions used. But good to have this mentioned to have us remind ourselves to take a step back on the stats naming and reassess for more accurate naming choices, which surely is based on both a cross between logic and common conventions.
The attack speed stat is per second. Surely the confusion is due to the attack speed that affects all sources and it being cacluated as a % decrease vs weapon specific attack speed that is in raw numbers minusing in order to decrease the time between each attack. This is indeed confusing without better visual representation to clarify what each upgrade covers as well as the formatting of the text and being able to seenyour current stats, again largely the game jam constraints hitting us there.
As to directions and knowing what to do during the game. Here we opted to lean more onto the "show don't tell" mantra even to the extent of not holding you hostage to conversations - you can just walk away.
You spawn at the very back of a town, the only path naturally leads you to the combat area and all sources of information are scattered along your path. Specific sources are highlighted immediately with a yellow exclamation mark to focus the players attention on them first and foremost, with the dog being immediately visible at the start. These key animals all have a common request "candy, snack, treat" to which the UI has a slot for. We opted here to let the player make the connections naturally. However where you get this candy/snack/treat was left behind on the cutting room floor due to constraints. That being clarified somewhere was indeed missing, only mild hint is you needing to slay the Ogres. But to help orienting the player we designed both the respawn system to lead you from spawn through the town to re-assess your options and made sure your progress outside the town was always retained for easy of continuing the fight - no pesky start over try again here.
There are many ways around this and it is good to hear where this approach faltered in your case, so many thanks for mentioning it. Always good to see where you get blindsighted with your design intentions.
Very much true with the enemy variety. Given the scope of the game, the intricate systems, cut scenes, voice acting, weapons and all of these, we didn't get around to the ranged enemies. Actually there are animations in place for the Ogres and different iterations for faces. We even had in place around 40 unique drawn facial expressions that work universally across all the character models, just didn't have time to implement the change of faces except for those splattered with monkey poop! 💩
Oh my, this message got a bit long. Well again thanks for all that feedback it is always very helpful to get a chance to review and reflect on choices made, why they were made and to have blindsights exposed. Very helpful thanks!