I liked this! The aesthetic is nice, and while I can see where you wanted to put more effort in places I have to say just simply getting a game into a game jam is an accomplishment of its own, speaking as someone who failed miserably to do that last year and in many jams prior.

The time limit get-things-done-as-fast-as-you-can-while-unlocking-shortcuts-for-next-time formula is one I don't think I've seen as often as I think probably exists (although the only major recentish example I can think of that I've seen outside of other jam games is the second Turnip Boy game). I like the idea but the moving pace with such a harsh time limit did get a bit frustrating, especially as I was increasingly in the belief that I had to spend as much of the loop inflated as possible.

Full disclosure, I did give up trying to finish the game after getting the left-half of the pendant, mostly because I got stuck and couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong after getting into the crystal room and not being able to interact with anything but the screen, and I couldn't figure out what to do with the hint about the observation room not being monitored. 

You seem pretty down on yourself from a lot of the in-game text. I certainly understand getting burned out on a game jam – there’s a reason the only thing I did this year was help a friend with minor development on theirs, rather than develop something of my own. But, in my opinion, this is on the high end of structurally complete, playable games that has come out of this jam (or its prequels!): a Fetch Quests: The Game adventure game that gives enough hints in its dialogue and environment design to make its puzzles solvable without trivializing them. There are fundamentally good design and world-structure-based communication ideas here that many game designers miss. This is an effort to be proud of.

I certainly understand regret over not finishing graphical assets out more – there are obvious missed opportunities for cutscenes, inflation state, NPCs, etc. – but this jam has a lot more games with visual assets and no identifiable gameplay than games with a solid core of gameplay and adequate but incomplete graphics. This is genuinely one of the stronger results of the jam. I hope the experience of rating other games will help you appreciate the substantial merits of your own!