I wanted to beat this game before reviewing it but it's taking me awhile and I feel like I've seen a good amount of the game so far. I'll revise or submit another review when I do end up beating it, tho, if my thoughts change at all.
This is a great idea for a game jam submission because the emptiness of the world feels like a design decision, rather than a time-saving one. In fact, a lot of things that would have seemed half-finished in another game just seems like it's meant to be that way. The only time the game gives any indication that things are sparse because of the time limit are when you meet yourself and are given a suicide pill because "there's nothing else to do here."
I didn't find much story beyond what's there initially. I did get some new items to appear in the store, but the only thing I ended up using was the earrings and the upgrade substance for it. I picked Fists and Flurry and Barrage and, frankly, had no reason to try anything else. I'm gonna say this now: if you don't plan on having more than one party member, I don't see the point of restricting what skills that character can use. Frankly, once I found what worked, I just kept doing that over and over. I tried out the Fingerless Gloves, but I didn't really like the finickiness of how magic works. I would have switched to magic if there was a healing spell. That's what I wanted the most, but again, it seems like a design decision rather than an oversight or anything. But it did mean that certain maps took retry after retry to get through. Great for a game jam, but it would be pretty frustrating otherwise.
I like the use of dust to travel to different maps, but it only really works when the maps are fairly empty. I think if more structure were applied to it, then it wouldn't work. For instance, if the maps had things that you'd have to come back to in order to progress further, or you went to a map too early and didn't have the whatever in order to advance (heck, if you went to one and you weren't strong enough yet, or there was a tricky puzzle you wanted to skip until later), then it might be a good idea to have a way to look at what formula is needed to go where (ie, how much of this and that dust to make the connection to this or that map). As it is, it works fine, but if you start adding things or the maps get more complex with more things to do, to the point where someone will want to skip to another map without doing everything in the other one first, then it's gonna get a bit more confusing/frustrating.
So far, this has been my favorite submission. I am hoping, tho, that the game gets expanded and improved upon, because, for one thing, doing the same sequence of attacks over and over gets boring. I noticed there was a main hand and an off hand, but never figured out what goes in the offhand. Personally, I'd have liked to have been able to put the shield there, or the fingerless gloves, and either gotten defensive stuff or magic to use. Maybe when I see what you actually do with it and how you expand on the classes, I'll change my mind, but for now, the main problem with the game is how repetitive the combat is. So far, it feels like mashing the attack button just with extra steps.