Thanks for playing and the feedback. Glad you are enjoying the story.
The tutorial is due for a complete overhaul. It was created before we had the popup tutorials. The interactive combat is probably going to be dropped, and replaced by a Training Hall, that will be something like the Tavern where they player can click on what they want to learn about. We can then add more of these in later towns as well. We've been working to not make the tutorial more wordy, but also try to better explain the affinities and that all items are consumed by the Slimes. The original jam theme was "Consume", and we like the combat keeping that as a core mechanic to help the game have something distinctive. Items will also be getting a secondary description for how Slimes can use the items when they eat them.
The previous version was too difficult for many people, and they were stopped at the fight with the knight at what was then the first town you visited. This meant that very little story was seen. We decided to go the other direction for now, and make it easy so that people can see more of the game. Once we restore the ability to save & load, we will up the difficulty. Without saving you have to restart at the beginning, so it made the situation even worse for jam reviews.
There are currently 6 towns in place, plus the starting town. The plan is for around 20 towns, though that may change as the story develops. We have the key locations and events worked out, but everything in-between is evolving as we get to it.
The art is very much a work in progress. We had been using public assets during the original jam, and have switched to our own, but there is a lot of art for the game, so it is currently early concept art, with polish planned as we have time.