Thank you very much for the feedback! Let me preface that this is made for Ludum Dare, a game jam made to make games in 3 days. (or 2 days solo) So we have to make do within the time limit. The theme of it is “delay the inevitable”, hence the entity.
So all of the shortcomings, the lack of direction to lead the player, and improvements to the story are a result of that.
The idea and the game are designed around to get around the challenge of finding the way to the end while “delaying the inevitable”. So navigational, memorization and reflex skills are important in this case.
It is supposed to be somewhat frustrating since it’s at the heart of the story. That’s why the death messages keep saying for you to tread on, and, of course, reveal a bit of the story, and make the ending worth it. We did our best to make it easier to at least bear for a very decent amount of time, at least, (for example the generous invulnerability frames) but not make it cheap. (Like hugging the walls to easily find the end without using the Lighterang is one of those use cases)
I agree that the objective is not clear, intentionally so, but we have to insert it somehow to not make it obvious. Also, from watching your gameplay there will be dialog reworking that needs to be done… and a bug I need to fix. (“From your touch” should imply parrying for example, but the flower hitbox is bugged in the tutorial…)
We’ll be patching the tutorial and that one bug I found through your video though!
In any case, we do thank you for the lengthy review and feedback, and we will definitely consider these for the next time we update post-jam or for when we make a new game! The video was definitely very valuable in this regard.