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Hi Ilias! Nice to meet you :)
Sorry to hear about your space bar, next time I will think about adding more than one binding per action.
About game freezing, as I answered to the others mentioning it, It was related to a bug in my code :sad:, now its gone.

About your questions:

Is Excalibur a game engine? Is it user-friendly and easy to master?
Yes, its a 2D game engine made with ts. You can check it here. It's my second time using it so I'm fairly new but it has a lot of things that comes with it and its documentation its friendly enough to start developing. I do not recommend using it if you're new to game dev, since many things do not come with doc and you will need to "find your way" (as I did in my last jam for the main rotation, you can check the game here).

What tools or technologies were essential to the development of your game?
An IDE for editing ts files (vscode is good enough for starting), npm installed locally (you can check it here) and thats it.

How did you approach balancing productivity and time constraints within the game jam timeframe?
This time I did manage poorly :(. I started working on the game without a good design and having only 6hrs left. It was my first time using Animations, Spritesheets and Tilemaps so it took a big chunk of my time understanding these new APIs. However, in the average scenario, I think giving yourself enough time to design the game (with pen & paper) will make the biggest difference! Developing towards a specific destination is 10x better than going at random directions.

What inspired the core idea behind your game?
Brainstorming ideas quickly, thinking about what was I able to achieve with this little time, made the difference and let me focus on a simple design with few resources to protect  and a fighting character, using sprites and animations to learn the most :)

Could you tell me more about your creative process and the motivations behind your project?
Nothing much to say, just use pen & paper and focus on a smaller achievable objective that you can improve on (if time left). Starting with the "scarse resource" concept and the environment being "desert" (my take on the theme), narrowed my thinking and drove me towards an idea of "defending" few resources, thus the plants in the middle.

Thanks again for the comment!