I totally hear you on the hitstop, I may have gone a little crazy with it. Some of my playtesters raised the same concerns but I kinda let it go because it is the JUICE jam yknow? I agree with all of your points, I'll definitely see where I can fix it up after the jam closes, but the code is an absolute mess lol. Thank you so much for the thought out critique, it comes wildly appreciated.
haha I can 1trillion% relate to code being a mess. I had to rewrite the transition system for sleep debt like...3 times. My object orientedness could use some work, lol. The entire game (except the opening) is housed in a single scene because I really didnt want to struggle with scene management and persistence in a webGL game (Last time i did, i had weird bugs). I think a lot of people went ham with the hitstop tbf, haha. It's def one of those things (like bloom and chromatic aberration) that are best when barely perceptible (unless you are going for something intentional).