This game's real fun, even in the prototype stage. Speaking of:
AT THE TIME OF THIS WRITING, THE ICE ELEMENT IS NOT YET IMPLEMENTED.
I asked Lunar to confirm this; they say a patch is incoming after the jam.
This +/- list looks worse than it is, but there's a lot worth talking about:
+ Really fun game loop; I would play more of this. The elements feel fun and distinctive
+ The art is gorgeous
+ There's quite a few interesting upgrade paths to follow
- Enemies are fast enough that when they spawn in front of you, they're nearly unavoidable. Having no way to heal makes this especially painful.
- Ability balance needs refinement. To whit:
- Effects that slow/knockback are useless, because enemies push each other along even if you slow the frontrunners. This means that water and earth are trap picks for the first element, while wind doesn't do enough damage to keep up with just picking fire and oneshotting everything early on.
- The slow/knockback behaviour means that 2/6 of the available upgrades are not valuable. The optimal build is to take 4 levels of pickup range and get ring of fire to level 8 ASAP
- The levelup system triggers on EXP gained, but you can't upgrade anything unless you have the resources for it. You'll skip a number of levelups simply on the basis that you can't buy anything yet and have to wait.
- At higher levels, the upgrade system requires a ton of clicking. Others have mentioned the issues with costs/combining, but making 62 mud for that next upgrade gets rough on the hands.