WOW, this game has so much work put into it, its unbelievable! First off, the art style is amazing! Just from the general stuff like character and background design to the choice of color palette to the detailing of the pixel makes everything just come together so well! The animations and particle effects of each and every single element, down to like the small bats flying in the background after approaching makes the world feel so alive! The art really adds to the charm and fun of the game being played, so great work on that! The sound effects properly convey the actions they correspond and the music is just super well done and adds to the atmosphere of the game! Now for the gameplay, there is so much here, its honestly crazy! The player controls feel refined and satisfying to move around in! It was an interesting idea to make the player lunge forward for the bite attack regardless of previous player velocity, but it created some really interesting and niche movement tech (can be used to instantly back away / retreat from enemies rather than slowly drifting to the opposite direction, which saved me in a couple of tough spots)! The upgrades are also so well thought out and have real significant impact towards how much more powerful the character feels to move around in! These power-ups are even further utilized with the shortcuts that are neatly and organically placed in the level without feeling out of place! Its amazing to see both the variety in enemy types and the attention to detail in the level design integrated perfectly into a 7-day game jam submission! I would say that the timer for the sun rise was a bit generous, but I assume that was made to make first-try boss attempts possible to achieve, which I haven't tried yet because the game is pretty hard just playing it normally haha. Speaking of the boss, it was really well done and provided a lot of challenge! It took a couple of tries before I was able to beat it, and I was super pumped when I did!
Overall, this was such a fun and engaging game to play! Its hard to imagine the amount of effort and polish that was put into making this! It offered so much for a game jam submission, and honestly feels like a finished product (didn't even run into any bugs from the time I played). This was really enjoyable and I hope you had fun with this jam! Great work!