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Thanks so much for playing and the feedback! We did ideate on a several concepts, but landed on this one for a few reasons.

We liked the idea of flipping the prompt on its head. We anticipated a lot of titles would focus on being a weapon, doing weapon things. In our case, we're a sword who'd rather be a farming implement. This idea supported that concept better than the rest.

The idea behind two game phases came from giving the sword agency. To do so, we needed some way of giving the sword more than just a personality, hence the platformer. It's up to the sword to change its fate by collecting runes that impart disastrous effects on its wielder. We could have made these strictly additive—and the original idea for the day phase was an auto-battler that would have done so—but we found very early on in testing that this wasn't exactly any fun. Night phase you platform and day phase you watch a battle cutscene while the game just does math? We decided to continue giving the sword (and thereby the player) agency in how the battle (and warrior awareness) plays out. Win or lose!

So the two phases became distinct with different skills being necessary in both, with the connective tissue being the abilities (runes) you manage to collect and equip during the night phase.

The secondary reason is that in this game jam we wanted to expand our knowledge and tread new ground. What better way than to combine two play styles we'd never touched before! It allowed us to build a lot more game with developers dividing time across scenes / mechanics. 🙂

FWIW: Your game is one of my favorites of the jam so far!