Very frantic experience, this. I will give you my detailed feedback below, and hope that you take it to heart but not personal or attacking. This is just my point of view and I'm in no means the be all, end all of game design, bear that in mind! If the game was bad I wouldn't go through the trouble of writing this! :)
Summary:
Adherence To Theme
- Fits the Theme extremely well, I like the unique Idea.
Game Design
- You know yourself that you could've made holes in the wall to indicate I can travel through them. I don't need to tell you that.
- Overall I like the game Loop, it felt like a Bullet Hell Shooter at some point though, because of that, the barrier to completion is quite high, I feel like. It took me 17 tries to finish and I'd say I'm not the worst player, some people won't finish the play-through for a Jam this hard, I learned that the hard way.
- There could've been a Cross hair on your Mouse Cursor. (It was ok without but it would add a lot.)
- There could've been Enemy Health Bars, since they tanked so much damage and spammed attack so hard, at least knowing when they will vanish will help me reduce MY anxiety level. :D
- Some Items that had to be picked up where kinda hard to make out. Including an Outline or vary them more would make more sense. Why would I pick up a hard wired phone for school but not a Flat screen TV? I don't know because the game only told me that there was something to look for when there where Enemies nearby.
- I think you over complicated your game in the tutorial section. It was quite the wall of text and could really be simplified to one piece of text, however it's a game jam and it's addition is always welcome! Plus I liked that you have a concise and working Menu System in place!
Originality
- Very original Idea, shooting Pencils against your bad thoughts and reducing anxiety. Well played on the theme as well.
- The Gameplay is kind of refreshing in and on itself. I would've stopped playing but wanted to finish it because it was something different.
Style
- The Pokémon-esque design was very clean and well done!
- As I mentioned in Gameplay the collectibles could've been a bit clearer but looked very nice.
- The Animations where pretty stellar, especially the book. I could clearly use a page of that!
- The music got a bit annoying on my 17th run, it is pretty simple but fits the graphics and Gameplay well. I liked that there was a different theme for the menu, that had the same style but slower.
- The SFX where reasonable and fit very well.