I also played this for the finals, here are my thoughts as well:
This was a nice short game. I did find it a little tough to get used to the battles as there is no tutorial and you got 1 HP so any hit kills you. I died a few times as I came to grips with the system. Some way to train the player would be a nice addition (though make it optional too for the veterans).
I do wish though that when you died you got just kicked back to the start of the map. Having 1 HP early on it feels a lot like a puzzle game instead and having the game return you to start of map instead would I think be a nice addition to this game. Also would reduce the whole let's go load my save, and so on.
The final battle did feel RNG dependent, as I had 2 HP then and it needed 3 hits to KO and I do 1 HP per hit. So I had to hope it missed one attack to survive the battle. It did miss though on my 2nd try so I did pull it off. Still removing the RNG dependency would go a long way there at the end.
Overall though it was a good well made game, I just have minor quibbles with a couple things. Hope you do continue to work on this and good luck on getting to the finals of the IGMC!