As a first thing a question. Was this game endless, or was it supposed to end somewhere? For I think it mentioned at beginning to save at least 8 people, and I did, actually I had 5 people following me, since I couldnt find the church, and found more people along the way, and when I got there, 4 of them disappeared, making rescued amount be 8/6 or something else similarly confusin like that, and I couldnt get that last one to stay at church, even I tried to go back.
Hence I was wondering if there was a bug which prevented me from seeing the ending, and which could have changed my view on the "Best Christian Teaching"-category, as now you had a very nicely implemented game based upon the verse, but not much of actual teaching. I liked the parable of showing light to people to save them and taking them to church to save them, and fighting against the demons and basically praying to charge your light etc. Great parallelism there, which also taught a christian stuff a bit, but was expecting there to be some end which would have given the final "teaching" that this was still missing for this jams purpose.
I mean, for a regular game this had been a 5 start christianity already in all the parallelism, and church being there etc. but for a christian game jam, I would expect a bit more still.
But so the game otherwise. I liked it very much. It was very very buggy, but not in a critical way, stayed playable and occasionally confused a bit, but it worked well enough and was fun enough to play, despite all the bugs.
Basically only twice I had potentially a bad bug, as in, had they happened at wrong timing, could have ruined the experience.
One was a house that didnt disappear. As in, normally when you went behing the house, the house became transparent, there were couple of houses in which this didnt happen, and one time I had several enemies on me, I went down towards the house, and suddenly couldnt see myself, nor the enemies, that could have resulted in game over with bad luck.
Similarly, there were couple houses that didnt seem to really be there at all. You could get through their walls just like that, and they never changed transparent. At first I thought that was how they were supposed to be, as one enemy happened to come from side opening out, and then I followed it there and went through the whole house. Only at later point I realised it was not supposed to be so, and also, that there actually was no house at all there, and that again, had enemies attacked inside that blind space, could have killed me.
Couple of times trees also didnt go transparent properly,
Rest of the bugs werent that critical, well, except for the possibly not triggering game end one, if game was supposed to end after 8 people were rescued. I think it said so when I played the first time, but when I played the second time, it didnt show the tutorial anymore.
It took me quite long time to find the first people to rescue, didnt find until I realised to go behind a house for house to turn transparent, and human becoming visible, as quite many were that way.
As others said too, map, or any other indicator had been nice. There could have been a picture of the town, which had showed how many people in which areas there are supposed to be.
And on top of that, signs pointing back to church, since most annoying part of the game, was looking for church.
I would also more clearly make the edges of the game. For one thing that was confusing was that forest seemed to continue for ever, making me wonder if I should continue there or not, even worse, 1 or 2 people actually were in those forest, adding to the confusion even more.
I was also wondering if I continue long enough up or down, will I eventually go around the map or not.
Lots of confusion about the edges of the map, if there were any, seemed like at least to the right there was more clear edge finally, although behind trees.
Upgrades made game so much more fun, and especially the movement upgrade was something I started appreciating quite soon, since it was really annoying looking for church at slow speed.
Good thing was that houses were unique, so you could have figured out where you were all the time, but I didnt. Need to have more landmarks more clearly there.
I liked how enemies started fleeing when they got low health, that made them seem much more alive. And also there were areas where more enemies would attack etc. which kept the game varied, despite there being just one type of enemy.
Mood worked well, it was scary but not scary. Similar to Luigis Mansion, or that Mario Party or Nintendoland, or where ever it was level where one or more players are chacing ghosts with flashlights, this reminded them in a positive way.
When considering how buggy this was, it really shows how strong this game was in that despite such bad bugs still existing, it was very much a joy playing it.
That basically my main complain is that end was missing. And basically if there was an end after rescuing 8 people, then perhaps the upgrades would have needed to be rethought to having only 3 upgrade levels for example, to keep the upgrades more varied, for I started by maxing the extra XP as a first thing, then damage and speed, and didnt get elsewhere yet at all.
Edit: almost forgot to mention properly. what was it with that Rescued people amount keeping changing. like 0/5, 1/9, 2/8. 4/14? That second number seemed to keep changing randomly, while the first number was constantly based upon how many people had actually been rescued.