Thank you for playing for so long and leaving this amazing comment.
>i then understood the seals system which allowed me to get a ton of extra time on the hearts, got used to the dung designs and used to just letting the character motion bounce on the boxes getting the time and mana bonus and suddenly the game was playable
It brings me great joy in knowing you actually started improving. I put a lot of effort into handcrafting rooms and placing crates, testing different scenarios, and angles. I want players to get better as they familiarize themselves with different rooms, and explore different strategies. Knowing you played for over two hours, and started understanding the game more makes me very happy. At first it might be getting to know different rooms, but later it's even recognizing templates, and coming up with best Seals for different needs.
>the thing that really makes navigation within the time limit possible is the doors. just speed through the doors that are opened towards you and its very likely you will be able to get out.
Yes, looking at doors makes backtracking easier, which is why there are Negative Seals which also close doors, make them open slower, or hide your vision.
>eventually the guests stopped spawning even though i had them unlocked so i'm not sure what happened there.
In current build there are only 4 different Heart Rooms with guest placeholders; 1 room with female goblin, and female eastern orc, 1 room with female goblin and female western orc, 1 room with female western kobold, and 1 room with female leporidae (bunny furry). Past day 3 rooms with goblins are not guaranteed to appear. My guess was you had a generation with e.g. only rooms requiring kobolds, but did not unlock kobolds, which is why there were no guests.
The idea is whenever you see a room with a Heart, but no guest you can interact with the heart to see its requirements so next time you are at the reception you will know what to unlock.
>i was also not able to unlock the treasury tab to get to 100 gold necessary for the elf so i got capped at 30 gold and unlocked some traits
holding right mouse click over the button shows the requirement for it (Mimic employee, costs 25 gold). There are no placeholders for elves in current build. You were capping at 30 because of your Negative Seals. The base Gold Cap is 150, but you gotta change your Seals.
>UI need some work
Yes, I agree. All the UI is placeholders, so eventually I am going to change them all, and yes the seal list will need to be changed to what you suggested.
>the slime is just too punishing for beginers. if you fall on it without mana, the run is over; i think it could be better balanced with the seal system, where you make it more punishing in exchange for PoP.
There is a Positive Seal, which makes them disappear ("Drain Sticky Slimes") if they cause too much trouble. There is also Negative Seals which makes them even worse ("Thirsty Sticky Slime Pools" Seal makes them steal Mana).
>it's gonna filter a lot of people with how difficult it is
Yes, I don't hide the game is hard. I expect people to fail, and get better at it. The mere fact it's a game with a timer is probably going to push many people away.
>my first few runs i just didnt go too deep
That's actually intended way to play. If you don't feel too confident, it is best to just collect coins, and make sure you return to the entrance, because penalties are punishing (There are Seals for them too).
>while learning i also had to restart the game a few times to get the smaller dungeon types.
There is also option before you start dungeon (Dungeon -> Dungeon Options -> Show Timer Options) to play with unlimited time (and only getting 10% gold) which can also help with practising. If you don't do Main Objectives, that option is always going to cost 0 Gold.
Thank you yet again for this really long feedback. The amount of time you put to really understand my game made me very happy.