I won! This was awesome!
At first, I found the “only use potions in combat” frustrating, but I theory crafted it as the enemy’s attacks showing you how to cut harder or dodge better and got over it. Venturing deeper into the cave to fight more and more intimidating creatures and then growing in power (over 50 ATK 50 DEF) and slaughtering everything was an incredible arc. Fog of war was a great choice to give mystery to the cave and I love the readability of the enemy design.
I died several times before I figured out how to balance health loss with “learning” so I could buff my character up. At first, I was trying to get potions and retreat to easier enemies, but I think once I figured out how much a chicken got me and kept an eye on my hp, it was smooth sailing (but my rampage was still engaging).
I didn’t pay much attention to enemy atk/def values to calculate how many hits I could take – my formula was initially stay above 1 and after some maxhp became stay above 8. I wonder if getting hit for 4 damage would make the game more interesting or overload me with math (presumably that was possible, but my def got up fast enough that I don’t think I lost more than 2 in one hit). I guess it would have been welcome towards the end.
Well done! One of the most impressive jam games I’ve ever played.