Thank you for playing and great comment.
>Green sludge. I hate it.
I laughed out loud when I read that. If They cause too much problems, there is a Seal ("Drain Sticky Slimes") to turn them off, alternatively you can use Seal "Ability: Vertical Dash" to get out of them.
>Tiny mushrooms seem to have a slightly too small hitbox
I play on with high mouse sensitivity, so what I do is I jump for the direction the small mushrooms are turned towards, and rotate mid-air to face the direction they are going to bounce me while holding sprint. They take time to get used to. If their colliders were large you would keep climbing on top of them instead of landing on them. I included a camera offset option, so maybe it could help playing around with that. I leave it at default, but I am obviously used to the game.
The mana is actually not as important as you might think. Mana less runs are possible. Using mana is good for taking shortcuts, but at least what what I noticed from watching some people play, they use it up when they don't need to, and then don't have it when it would be helpful.
>As you get better at navigating the rooms the game becomes less about solid platforming and more about guessing the correct path.
The luck element to generation is always going to be there. There are some abilities like Radar and X-ray Seals that can help a bit. Familiarizing yourself with rooms, and figuring out best ways to progress through them makes platforming easier, which really is what I wanted to achieve given the whole game is about memorization, quick thinking, and adapting.
>Very few room tiles makes the macro-level navigating confusing and repetitive, though I imagine this will be fixed naturally over time as more tiles get made.
I got over 40 different rooms now, but some of them (like bigger rooms) are not used on smaller templates, so it feels like there is even less. You are right, I hope it is going to get even better with more rooms I add, making rooms less repetitive. I also plan on adding decorations in future which should help make rooms more unique.
>it feels too mandatory to play it as safe as possible with the timer.
I can tell you with as much experience as I got, the time because much less of an issue. Some seals are more important than others on different Templates.
I plan on having more meta progression in future, so the game is also going to get easier thanks to some stat ups, but I have yet to implement any of the needed systems (side objectives, skill tree).
I am happy to hear you enjoyed the overall gameplay loop. Thanks for playing all the feedback again.