Really great game, a clever and frustrating mechanic with the energy. It did walk the fine line between challenging and frustrating for me, but I might just have a lack of patience. The energy reset on changing screens opened up some good opportunities for clever puzzle solutions which forced some headscratching. I did think some of the solutions were a little finickity like where you have to graze the ear of the totem to get full energy for the rest of the puzzle. Major points as well for using an element of adaptive music, it worked really well. Overall it was really well implemented and made given the time period. Congrats.
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Music and sfx person here. Thanks for the compliment ^^ - I'm trying to expand my ability to use music dynamically in games!
As for the difficulty - yes, there is a fine line there. We did discuss the payoff between challenge and reward a lot and decided it might not be as fun for everyone with the standard mechanics, so we added an "easy mode" option in the settings to play without the stamina restraint.
We have learned so much about the game/level design from watching people play the game and providing us with feedback. Game design is hard but extremely rewarding.
<3 thanks on behalf of the Hamsterwell team
I agree. That we definitely knew upfront, this wasn't going to be a game for everyone. Another idea that we discussed to encourage less avid platformer players was to interject more story elements into the game. I myself am always driven by a greater sense of narrative and discovery, which I think we tried hinting at, but our team did not cover a role for writing and storyboarding. Perhaps for a later, updated version!