i like how the player character means business moving left or right making the player kill all the enemies before level clear is a little crazy i like the color theory of the enemy design + stage lmk if u want some music made for this!
cool player character! i got past the first group of lasers once, theyre not the funnest to time the enemy was fun to see but i forgot i could shoot them lol (died to laser tho smh)
visual - i think character design is definitely a strength of yours (my favorite part of the other submission was the enemies' visual appeal), the area/arena is something that can be explored eventually but the genre depends on cute monsters, and that was delivered on.
story - i think the tone this game is going for is great and can't wait for more updates to capitalize on a lot of the ground work laid here. type chart is fun flavor and could be pretty compelling when all is said and done
gameplay - (on difficulty 3) i accidentally went big doggo (highest damage with self-sustain) and lost the run to too many sanctum visits (i did save when it was looking grim, might revisit), Grimjaw is the best of the encounters (if it is 4/4 monsters in rn) so the trade-up mechanic didnt make sense to me until the run was lost imo. i feel like a wisp to start to basically force the player to find this is more in line with the gameplay goals. as is, engaging with the mechanics early seems suboptimal until at the very least you end up doggo rolling, which wasnt the best experience for learning. but there's a lot of solid progression that you can engage with at any moment (i also think two team slots to start would do a lot for figuring stuff out, but understand why that might be too hard to counterbalance with encounters especially early)
music - no music i feel is the let down rn, sanctum doesnt feel like a separate area from the explore zone, and music is another way to help help the player wrangle with that.
theme - im gonna level my dog forever and then my dog got sick QQ, not strictly a fractal, but i enjoyed it being someone who gravitated towards this jam, and think it's a reasonable way to get this more eyeballs OvO
(i'm probably gonna come back to this when i can appreciate the short-long term mechanics available, and may add smth to this comment then)
visuals/narrative - i think having a novel way to engage with the voynich manuscript is a fun idea!, i enjoy gathering all the bliuster of a guy who has thought about 2 times maybe only to be puzzled in a new way ;). i think the visuals carry the gameplay effectively, however a few of the pages are hit or miss, and i wouldnt ov minded some curation or an in-game comparison to the original, or some text about what the page is speculated to be!
music - i think the music does promote a sense of exploration but i worry that the scale is incongruous with the gameplay presented. i think your character moves to fast for any element of the music, i think the musical sections (when there are new parts) are a touch longer than a page half-engaged with but considerably shorter than a page that you attempt to complete. it also doesnt mean much for doom scroll (min time to go from left arrow to right arrow)
game feel - it feels bad to just change the colors of speckles, reveals are always better. i managed to avoid doom scroll for awhile (12-15 pages?) but was disappointed that doom scrolling didnt uncover anything new (i was hoping for section different from plants, again curation i suppose), and the end not being telegraphed and locking you out reinforces my in-game death wish. however thank you for making this game and sharing it in the competish, it was nice to interact with this material on our own terms :>
theme - i think some of the plants (especially the star snowflakey ones) defo fit with the demands of the jams. i'm not sure the plants were selected towards this idea :p. also presentation encourages doom scroll at a cetain point, meaning its kinda linear, or at the very least stringy
/////////My Sputnitsa... Saucy!