Thanks so much for playing! I agree that navigational help would be nice haha, I've gone into my thoughts on it in some detail in some other comments. I really appreciate your feedback!

Thankyou so much! I probably overcommitted by doing this much animation for the game jam and maybe could've spent my time better, but since they're the main feature of this project I'm really happy how they turned out and I'm really glad you like them <3

The ghosts can be pretty brutal ahaha

The trick if you're stun locked is to hold X and a directional input and you will dash through them before they can deal more hearts - ghosts can keep smacking you around when you're in helpless state but they can only take hearts when you're in control, so you can always dash before they hit you again.

Haha thanks, I love working in Scratch, I used to want to try to learn a different engine but I think I've resigned to the fact that Scratch is where I work fastest, am most comfortable and have the most fun

I really appreciate you giving it a try!

Thanks so much for the feedback - if you already found the key and gave getting home a good shot then you've experienced pretty much all of what the game has to offer at least!

I completely agree getting home is the worst part of the game and pretty arbitrary.

The game is supposed to be a little hard in that sort of NES unfair kind of way, especially since I didn't have time to add lots of enemy types or things like that so I'm really pleased with the half of the game where you follow the flames to the key - it's just fair enough to be doable and make sense but also sometimes you get lost for a while or the ghosts kill you and it's frustrating - something about that sort of difficulty through amature game design feels kinda retro to me 😅

But because there's no flames or equivalent to get back home - only memory, and the map is randomly generated and very samey, I think the half you struggled with is the part I'd like to fix because it feels pretty random whether you get home or not and it's unfair to expect players to remember the way back - if I ever polish up the game I think my first fix attempt would be to have a letter carved into the bricks of each torch room, that way you're still sort of using your memory to get back (so I preserve the gameplay a bit) but you can remember what letters you've already come across and know which ones were closer to home, maybe they even appear in alphabetical order so when you see A - D you're like "okay I'm really close"

But I digress those are just future thoughts of a different game - thanks so much again for giving the game jam version a try and your feedback ❤️ (and sorry for the long reply)