Hey there RetroKiwiDad, I got your game for judging so here are some of my thoughts. Collecting enemies to become your battle companions is a great idea and I loved their unique designs, though I wish that creativity went into the mapping as well. I ended up on the cave ceiling a few times due to tileset passability errors, which didn't ruin the game but took me out of the moment.
I wasn't able to finish the game before the time limit (reached the second floor of the mansion) because it took me a little while to get a handle on the systems, so I wish there had been a short tutorial. Instead I learned through trial and error, which worked okay but did leave me sticking to a battle style that mostly relied on putting the enemies to sleep and defeating them one-by-one. All of the different statuses left me confused, since while the icons looked nice I wasn't sure what most of them meant. So again I learned through trial and error, which also caused me to lose my full teams a few times... I really have to second everyone else that a tutorial and some explanation at the start is needed.
I only got Karma from a battle once, because getting 1 per battle just didn't seem worth it when I could devour instead. I didn't use items often since I'd just run to the healing water after battles, but if you want to make items more useful then giving Karma after every battle (with the option to increase it by releasing the enemy) would be good.
Overall, this was a very clever idea that suffered from having to stick to the contest deadline. I do hope you continue this project though or let the concept evolve into something new because a great game idea is there, it just needs more time and polish.