wow thank you so much for such a detailed review! I'm incredibly flattered by all your kind words and for taking notice of all the little details!!
I'm always nervous about sharing games I make because I don't make my own tilesets and i feel that sets me back a lot, but I'm glad I can still make something worth playing with these tools anyway!
I'm so glad you liked Alga too, I was worried people might think I made her too woobie or annoyingly pathetic.
I always want to make sure I credit people for the hand they had in helping me make my games a reality, and I tend to credit as much as possible when I can, haha! I'm so so grateful for the plugin creators for their rly life saving (er, game saving) tools!
I think when I make maps and such, I tend to focus on what makes the most sense "in real life" or "would x make sense in a 3d space?" A lot, so they end up sort of plain but I'm glad you could appreciate the little touches I made for them!
As for the hints, I also think I went a bit overboard, but I noticed with other games of mine, people tend to get confused or unable to understand what to do or where to go immediately after certain events, and end up wandering about- something I probably need to work on to make certain things more obvious yet not as blatant as telling them what to do next- I'm slowly figuring out a nice balance, so this is good criticism!
As for the horror elements, it really was more of an unsettling undertone other than the gore parts, I'll admit- I once again focused mostly on how to make the story cohesive, and ended up making the game itself more like a story than an actual "game-game", haha
But, again thank you so much for noticing the little things and for playing my story ❤️ I feel like I learn a lot with each jam in a part of, so I really appreciate the helpful feedback!