This is undoubtedly my favorite game in the entire jam! Unfortunately it doesn't meet the topic requirements I'm looking for... I'll explain later.
The visuals are stunning. The minimalist details fit very well together, and the color choices for the terrain and ore are perfect.
The game is simple and is not overly complicated. I had a perfect understanding how everything worked. (although I am looking at the screenshots and I just found out apparently you could create terrain with the laser, don't know how I missed that) I understand some people didn't know that the sunlight hurt them but it was immediately obvious to me. The name of the game is called Sunburn after all.
You did a great job creating a sense of becoming more powerful the more you played, and you had objectives that made me want to finish and complete them. The game with the mining and ore collecting does get a little repetitive but I was still hooked. I played for an 15 extra minutes even after I finished everything. My only complaint was that after I did everything I wanted more, but sadly every journey must come to an end.
The music and sound is great. It's a bit on the quiet end, but I don't mind. Maybe it is missing a few sound effects here and their but maybe that is a good thing because otherwise it would have been overwhelming and may have distracted from the experience.
Now lets talk about the topic requirements. I understand that many people have a different interpretation of what it means "Failure is Progress," the majority of people thought it meant keep dying and get stronger or gain more knowledge, etc... other people kept on the surface level and took a story approach to it. In your case, you chose the former. The problem with that is that I've seen it too much, so it's not really that original and it doesn't make it stand out from the rest.
With that being said, there are games I gave higher ratings than this, but this is still my favorite game in the jam because it's so engaging and doesn't frustrate me at all. Out of every game I have played so far, this is the one I really want to this made into a full game that I can sink hours into playing and pay money for.