this is definately the longest game jam game ive ever played and thats true even though i got loft locked without finishing it (let you know where on discord)
the graphics created a lot intrigue and looked very nice. the music was great and the sound effects were great to. it all worked together, making something atmosphereic. this is what i felt the game did really really well.
i think a save feature was essential for this game. like thats not typically the case for jams but this game really needed it, especially when it was going to be that long
the dialogue was nice (the voices and effects on the font were to). thought the 4th wall breaking felt a bit too frequent but theres plenty that makes up for that.
it also controls well and the mechanics are thought out and easy to learn. the game did feel underwhelming at some points. i think one reason is because the puzzles were just so easy from what i played. maybe i just prefer slightly harder puzzles(getting softlocked was fun, that was a hard puzzle). there was a part of the game after getting ghost abilty i just killed myself over and over to get through what looked like puzzles. so that part mightve been easy because of that.
the other reason it felt underwhelming at times was feeling lost.
my sense of direction is pretty bad as is but here it seemed to go through a loop of:
solve puzzle>dont know where to go after (the path splits or something) and feeling lost>see puzzle>repeat
i think the feeling of being lost (even if your on the right path) was apparent from the first area where you didnt have a map. even though your heading towards where you need to, it felt aimless like you might be going somewhere completely different than your supposed to (didnt have enough confidence to stick to the right path)
when things opened up i was tempted to backtrack to see if a screen will now show me if i can do a puzzle but it would still show red. so theres a fair bit of backtrack but the screens were a brilliant idea. they fit in with the world and seem necessary for puzzles in a metroidvania so your not over thinking something you cant even do
so in a sense they kinda show you where to go but not all puzzles have screens and i guess if there was then slaming them and waiting for them to turn on over and over would get old
thought the map screen itself was quite good and the big robot that was on it really made me want to see what that was
but this is all just how i felt up to the point i made it up to
this game is very amitious for a month and a really impressive entry. really nice work!