The artwork in this game is really, really impressive. The variety in the backgrounds and level of detail shows that a ton of work was put into the art, and it really looks great. The music is also excellent, nice job. I also like the game concepts here -- absorbing the energy from defeated enemies, the way items can be combined, the workshop concept, the overground and subway concepts -- great ideas that were brought to life well by your team. It's all the more impressive because you did everything yourselves.
The game feels like it needs a good playtesting, and because that's what jams can be useful for, I wanted to provide some feedback that I hope is helpful:
1. When I started your game, I got a screen that is mostly purple (see first pic below). When I got to the main game scene, the purple issue went away, with the exception of when I extract life from defeated enemies -- that animation was purple. I could play on for a while, but then another scene was mostly purple (see second pic below) and no longer playable. I play Itch games in Firefox; I tried switching to Safari, and the purple issues went away. I then had no music or sound in Safari, but that seems to be a common issue with many games on Itch when played in Safari.
2. The checkpoints seemed a little off. Several times I saved at a checkpoint, died, and then was seemingly transported to some other checkpoint. I believe it happened when I exited a workshop as well?
3. The boss fight in the subway had a few issues. Sometimes the boss would not "wake up" to fight (it stayed still behind the subway car), but I also couldn't get past it (I'd be injured touching its collider), nor could I hit it with attacks. When I did fight it, I once hit the dash button toward the left, and dashed right past the collider and out of the boss fight, though the boss chased me up the corridor until I exited the subway.
4. I think the combat could use some balancing. The first two rolling/walking enemies are very easy to defeat, but the flying enemy feels like a very big jump up in difficulty, because when you hit it, it can fly out of reach and continue to attack, and it requires four hits. The subway boss also seemed very difficult to beat (I never did, though partially the issues above came into play). I would suggest a more steady ramping up in difficulty. I also thought the combat / sword attack would be more fun if quicker and more responsive.
This sounds like a lot of critiques, but I took this much time to write feedback because this game did many things really, really well, so I'd love to see it all come together. Keep up the good work!
