Thanks so much Human. You're absolutely right about some of those details that didn't get a full coat of paint, so to speak. Therese is a woman of few words, but "placeholder" is apparently one of them!
I am both ecstatic that the game was fun enough to play for two hours, and a bit miffed at myself for going so far over the playtime allotment (but more of the former if we're being honest). Still, there wasn't enough cushion left to trim anything unfortunately, so I will have to put that under the "lessons learned" column.
Balancing was... well let me leave that for a future dev log / itch.io post. I will say that most of the party members did intentionally skew towards the easy side, as I wanted folks to be able to complete the story should they decide to commit to the full 1-hr+ experience. Not sure if I'll make a post-jam update or not, but if I do, a "hard mode" and a super boss (regrettably cut for time) would both be on my radar.
It was a pleasure to participate in such a cool jam with lots of great games. Thank you for hosting it, as well as all the other cool stuff you've done for the community (too big of a list for this Comment section).