Thank you so much for the feedback, OwenBrandon! I’m really happy that you liked the idea and noticed its connection with the jam theme.
The intention was exactly to create that feeling of consequence: at the beginning, the player controls the Suitman invading the Ancestral Forest, collecting fires and defeating creatures along the way, but in the end realizes that he was the true villain. The better the player performs in the first part, the stronger the Suitman becomes in the final fight. If he reaches the end with low health and only a few ancestral fires, the bossfight becomes easier. If he reaches it with a lot of health and many fires, he becomes faster, more aggressive, and harder to defeat.
It is also important to mention that, in this fight, the one truly at risk is not exactly the Forest Protector, but the Ancestral Forest itself. The protector’s role is to stop the Suitman from stealing all of its ancestral energy. At the end, the ranking system calculates factors such as health lost during the level, number of fires collected, bossfight duration, and the remaining health of the forest, generating a score of up to 10 stars. However, since the menu Canvas ended up completely out of place because of a mistake on my part, it became practically impossible to properly use that experience and feel the motivation of beating your own achievements.
About the controls and movement, I completely agree. I still need to study acceleration, deceleration, character weight, and impact feel more deeply. The Suit’s hitbox was intentionally meant to be difficult, but the Forest Protector was supposed to have two additional powers: one that would cause confusion and make the Suitman slower or stunned for a few seconds, and another that would allow him to extinguish the fire on the tree and restore one stage of the tree’s health. That would have made the fight more dynamic and intense, with more possibilities.
About the visuals, thank you very much for pointing that out. I still have little experience with art, lighting, and visual direction, and I understand that some elements ended up not feeling very cohesive with each other. I want to improve on that, especially when it comes to connecting backgrounds, characters, effects, and atmosphere. I also agree that simple particles, such as impact effects on the mushrooms or effects on the ancestral fires, would help bring much more life to the game.
After the jam period, I intend to fix some of these points, especially the things that were already partially implemented but ended up not working correctly in the final build. Thank you again for such detailed feedback. It really helps me understand where to improve and continue growing in game development.