omg thank you for leaving such a detailed review!! :D
(SPOILERS)
i'm glad you liked the intro sequence! i thought that since the plot was about games-whitin-games already, it'd be cool to screw around with the player in a meta way haha. i tried to mimic how i'd write my first games, where i'd primarily use rtp assets and the writing was a bit corny, and sprinkling everything with jokes i'd actually made in my first projects so it'd feel more realistic. you hit the nail right on the head, i really wanted to capture that "first rpg maker project" vibe lol. i really liked doing the glitching part too, namely because random screen/game glitches can be super unnerving to me haha.
my goal was pretty much to make the players forget that they were playing an rpg maker game, and i'm happy to read that many people who played it think it's unique :> trying to come up with different gameplay and art styles for each game was tricky (especially since i wanted to make each one implement a bonus challenge), but i'm pretty satisfied with the result, and happy to hear you thought they all still fit together! the restricted colors were honestly pretty cool to work with, it was less "aw man how am i gonna make everything look good with such few colors?" and more "wooo there's less decisions to make!" haha (things like the rooms in his sight having randomly colored backgrounds was inspired by old atari games, where sometimes rooms would be a completely different hue than the previous one).
if you restart the game in the first two minigames the instructions show up again, but i admit it's not really intuitive. and i wanted the tutorials to be as simple as possible to both mimic how old games didn't really explain much about the gameplay (and make you feel satisfied when you found out how to play), and to spook the player when they figured out what the game's deal was haha. i get what you mean with saint peter's cross needing more explanation tho, i definitely suffered from tunnel vision with that one and assumed some concepts would be more intuitive than they actually are. partly the reason why i decided to add a walkthrough and an option to skip each game. regarding the fonts, they're the default ones you can use in pixilart (the website i use to make all my pixelart), and i get what you mean, they're not the mooost readable haha.
timing is one of the things i try to get as right as possible in my games; i think it's one of the most important parts of crafting horror in a horror game. sometimes when i'm playing horror games and something spooky happens i think to myself "man that would've scared me a lot more if the wait lasted a bit longer..." so i tend to make the waits a little long just to keep the player on edge haha. the one after the glitch specifically was done to make you think the game actually broke lol. but i do feel that some parts were a bit too stretched out.
thinking back on it, i definitely should've added more hints to the story, especially in the exorcism aaagh why didn't i think of that XD i did try to craft a sense of build-up to the plot with the dev notes in the last game but that's about it lol. and i definitely get what you mean with the devil's monologue being too heavy on exposition, i wanted to frame that sequence as it toying with you and telling you these things just for fun, but yeah i understand it felt more like the game was telling you these things. and the last wikipedia article was just me worrying that i wouldn't have explained the plot clearly enough, and i wanted it to feel like 'if you didn't get the plot, here's the full explanation of what happened. and if you did get it, at least it's a fun way to do worldbuilding' haha.
thank you so much for the feedback! i'm always trying to improve my game making skills and hearing people's opinions on my projects is a great way to do so. i'm really happy to know that even with all the stuff that could be improved, you liked my game that much :>
thank you for playing!! <3
(btw can't wait to try false fruit, it looks really unique! :D)