This was pretty neat, the intro was simple but good, the party creation was fun, and the combat while a bit "meh" for my personal tastes I think it was well done for an auto-battle system.
Unfortunately this is yet another case of "I liked this game and it is very impressive, but I couldn't finish it" :(
When I reached the second level, I hit a point where I didn't find an exit to the next level, and eventually I couldn't find a way to new rooms. I placed enough portals to cover the 4 entrances around the healing slugs, as I thought that MIGHT influence it, but still nothing. So sadly I never got to see the ending.
Speaking of the portals, I really like the system and the talking tardigrades and creepy slugs which trade sanity for health. And the ominous voiceover after you're healed is very nice! Though I found I was able to place more portals than I had tardigrades, not sure if that's a bug or not. Even if it was, it didn't take away my enjoyment at all as I still had to trade sanity. The tardigrades constantly talking about how great it would be to teleport was a nice detail too.
The combat system as mentioned earlier wasn't really my favourite, though personally I've just never been much of a fan of auto-battle gameplay. I will say though it had a lot of extra flair to it. The little sound effects for everything was great, the combat log was super easy to read and organized with the various colours. And the assortment of items was cool. The crit-tick was a really neat twist, additional sarcastic narration with chance of bonus damage made the fights feel less samey. It did admittedly get a bit bland having the same enemy type, but at least the enemy count and stats seemed to vary a fair bit. Still definitely not my personal preference of combat style, but it is still well done.
I am curious though, is there a way to regain sanity aside from random chance in combat? I only found it ever recovered if a character blocked or occasionally when an enemy damaged one of my party members.
The environment is atmospheric, though I wish there was some more variety. Considering how heavily this game focused on the mechanics, I think the more basic visuals can be forgiven. I do agree with another comment on here though that an artstyle similar to the opening cutscene would've been neat.
The UI may have had a lot of placeholder art, but it functioned. I especially noticed that I can open the party menu while the map is open and it doesn't break the game lol. The fact there is an automap is impressive tbh.
Overall, liked this one, clearly a lot of time and polish spent on it and has equal amounts of existential dread and humour. Great work!