ok, this is REALLY good - not just the gameplay (which is great), i really dig the aesthetics and the whole worldbuilding aspect of this. though the game doesn't shy away from kicking my ass - i managed to just about get through the first spirit and the lantern (esp once i figured out his timings - he's much better at telegraphing the wind-ups and thus much easier to parry than the spirit, imo) but the snake lady has thoroughly destroyed me and i will need some time to recover before trying to defeat her again
complexity is good in this particular case, btw, because it never feels unfair - the game gives you all the tools you need to beat it, and it's up to you and your timings to do it right. the only thing i could mildly criticise is the timings of the lantern's fire attacks - it felt juuuust a little bit arbitrary when the dodge worked and when it didn't. oooh, and i just remembered another thing - the "healing punch" attack's particles were sometimes blocking the view a bit, leading to me getting hit a few times
two more things i wasn't completely sure about (though it's 100% not the game's fault, i'm pretty sure the game was communicating this but i couldn't pick up on it): 1) i have the feeling that there's a certain perfect rythm to tapping the left/right slap buttons to maximise the rate of slapping per second but i could never quite catch it, 2) i also had a little trouble getting the timing right to parry "side" attacks. i thought at first that it depends on the side from which the attack comes (eg parry the attack from the left by a right-hand slap) but the lantern has proven me wrong. i guess my timings might have been flawed, i'll need to experiment a bit more
also, my brain would systematically make me dodge into the side attacks and not away from them :D i'm pretty sure it's the fault of me playing 100s of hours of Mount & Blade back in the day, where dodging into enemy attacks is generally preferable
but yeah, all in all great work - the atmosphere, the sound and music, the gameplay and the mechanics, the worldbuilding, the writing even, it's all top notch. would be cool to see this as a full-scale game