I think I'll put down some thoughts here from the process of making this game:
First, I was going to try and make this using Microstudio, but it has a build-in scaling system, and I wasn't feeling comfortable with how it was working, so I switched over to using Bitmelo. I'll still probably want to try out Microstudio for some things, but maybe something higher resolution where I won't care about things getting distorted as much, maybe something that relies more on geometric drawing commands than pixel art. There's a whole other player character sprite I didn't get around to exporting form there and importing to the new version of the game. that looks more like I'm riffing on Castle of the Winds since that's the first rougelike I played, though obviously I didn't get to implementing the sort of mechanics from it I would like.
Secondly, it was probably a pretty big mistake to try and store directions as strings instead of vectors, a good chunk of development was just on mapping direction values around properly so as to use them to make some of the enemies navigate by hugging walls.
With level generation, I clearly should have started that earlier. The first and second levels were initially made to test moving the player character around, getting simple enemies to work, and having stairs between floors. The bottom three floors use the system I tried making first, which is a recursive division algorithm. Unfortunately I couldn't figure out what was causing rooms to be made with zero width when I thought I had made sure there would always be some open space between walls. But unfortunately there's still a chance of two layers of walls getting built next to each other and blocking off each other's doorways, potentially making the level impossible.
The top level is a binary tree maze, which isn't as interesting but at least works more reliably. I'll want to take the time to practice maze and level generation algorithms outside of jams just so I'm more familiar with what works and can get something working quickly.
Aside from all the above issues, I didn't get around to implementing combat beyond having to avoid letting anything touch you, or the stealth mechanic that I was hoping would be a big part of the game. Collecting a gem and taking it to a side room to a statue to bring it life was just something I put together last minute, and the name is just something I made up on the spot in a failed attempt to fill out the form and submit before time ran out. In fact, of the three games I have on Itch, all of them were meant for a jam and submitted late, except maybe the WTF which was either submitted with a small amount of time left or allowed as a late submission.
This time I was hoping to try and finish the day before the deadline to avoid such last minute submission issues, but there was just stuff going on at the house that day so I wasn't able to devote nearly as much time then as I would have liked. I think next time I do a game jam I should tell people around me that I'm doing so, so that they know I have something specific to work on that has a deadline.