I like the idea quite a lot, a puzzle based around scrounging up the energy to do things. The atmosphere is also nice, but unfortunately I found the game to be somewhat confusing- I found myself simply throwing random non-food items in random places at one point because I couldn’t work out a logical course of action, specifically, what to do with the pressure plate. I really thought you’d need to throw a moderately heavy stone on to it, but anything other than the biggest one won’t work, and I couldn’t find a verb that would let me pick the biggest one up.

I’m not against trial and error as a concept, but it can get frustrating when the trials require replaying the game from the start. This is admittedly a lot more bearable because the game is fairly short (at least what I played) once you know what to do, and dropping items from the last run could help out as well. In practice, though, it felt like items that you drop aren’t actually useful because they’re only what you have on you when you don’t have anything that can help you progress. That is to say, mostly it’s just rocks.

All that said, I really do like the idea, and treading the line between “annoyingly obvious” and “annoyingly hard to figure out” is not an easy task. I’d say things should be a little clearer, but to an extent, that’s just my personal opinion, and I know making things too obvious would kind of ruin the feel of the game. I’d love to play through the rest of the game some time; I might give it another go in the near future and see if I can get farther with a mental fresh start. Good work overall, keep it up!

The color changing bouncing text at the bottom was a little too juicy for me to read consistently. I think it would be better if it moved in a consistent circle, but it occasionally jerks to the corners of its move allowance. Perhaps if it changed color a little slower too...

in the first moment, I eat the apple, and i have yet to fully figure out the controls. it gives the message of "Wizard needs food badly" which made me think gosh I just ate an apple! why am I starving? All that to say, it may be good to have the selection automatically go to a suggested action. Such as after you eat an apple, highlight the pickup action, or prioritize the 1 pickup function, 2 the move function, 3 the eat function, or something context related.