Solid game with some nice ideas! A few thoughts I had while playing:
- The journal is a nice idea. It's always pain to take a break from a game and then come back and have no clue what's going on.
- The story tree thing reminds me a lot of Radiant Historia. Very cool to see a similar thing in another game. I'm interested in seeing what you do with it!
- Is there a reason why the game has to reset when you use the story tree? You should be able to store the map id/player coordinates and jump back to the previous scene. Maybe it's difficult to do with XP, I haven't used it in a long time. Anyway, it might take a bit of work, but I think it would be worth the effort for a smoother experience.
- I like how you can hear the sea in the next room! Adds a bit of extra life/believability to the scene.
- There's missing capitalization at the start of a LOT of dialogue. Maybe it's a style thing, but even though you're starting dialogue with a name tag (which is capitalized) I think it looks messy if the body of the text is uncapitalised. Small nitpick, I know, but it looks messy imo.
- There's also missing punctuation at the end of dialogue. Again, looks messy.
- Getting insta killed by bats is a bit unfair imo. I know the game warns you they are dangerous, but I mean... they're bats! I didn't think they would kill me in one hit! Do they have rabies or something?
- I'm not keen on the modern slang like "Ya boi" and such. It feels low effort and out of place for a fantasy game.
The mapping and the focus on puzzles was good. Presentation overall was solid. You need to work on your writing, though. Nice effort!