Thanks for the detailed feedback. As you have clearly noticed this game was really rough around the edges, especially with regards to timing and mechanics and item drops. When I get to working on an extended version I'll definitely take your input into account.
If you're curious about what's going on with the graphics, the short version is that this game was created with MegaZeux and it is using stacked layers of DOS text mode graphics combined with a graphical hack that allows 4 colors per character. Here are some resources, though the wiki articles are probably much lengthier than necessary:
- A Twitter thread where I give a slightly longer overview of what's going on, with screenshots.
- MegaZeux overview on the MZX Wiki.
- MZX Wiki article on the text mode variant used.
The 18-bit VGA colors combined with those limitations and it being easier to dither tiles than sprites at this size (12x28 double-width pixels) is probably why the tiles look SNES but the sprites look more NES.
Also, all of the music from this game is available to download here. :)