I definitely like the idea of needing to execute things well under pressure, in fact I tried the game again after reading most of the tips in the loading screen and paying more attention to the description of the dungeon template. I now managed to get past all the baby step templates pretty easily with plenty of time to spare in most of my runs.
I think a lot of my issues with the game still stand, hell some of the more complicated rooms have some really annoying switch hunting which I absolutely despise, those wall levers really do not stand out at all and I highly recommend you make those way bigger or something else to catch the eye easily. The door tip is also extremely important and I would highly recommend teaching this to players in a better way.
the thing with extra time is, it is only good if you are good at collecting coins and destroying crates.
I think this is a thing that should be clearly communicated to the player, in my first playthrough I was trying to just get collect all the coins as I saw them, instead of spacing them out so I could manage the timer better. I think this is vital information that shouldn't just be told in a loading screen tip, but as a fundamental part of the game that should be explained in the tutorial because the game is clearly balanced around the idea that you have to do this. If the game is based around the timer, and a lot of design decisions are made around that timer, then why does the tutorial not have a timer? Why does it not teach any of the important information the player needs in order to play with the timer?
Some of them are faster, others are less riskier, or they got mana cost differences, or seal interactions and more.
Then I would like to see this properly shown to the player, the tutorial only shows use cases where they are required to use those jumps to proceed, but it does not teach how these maneuvers can be used to go faster in other situations. This creates a disconnect between the tutorial and the actual game because the use cases of the abilities in the actual game is different compared to what the tutorial teached the player to use them for.
Any ideas on how I could make it less complicated?
I still don't really get how the system works either, a lot of the seals seem poorly worded (I had no idea I wasn't able to collect more gold due to the gold cap seals, I thought that the gold cap would mean how much you could possibly obtain per dungeon run) and they are buried under multiple menus. Then there's the way you obtain new seals which just seems weird to me, not to mention the equipping of seals and obtaining of seals are completely different menus just make it confusing in general. But in general I think the game also does a poor job of telling me why I should use this system in the first place.
Overall I think I definitely enjoy the game a ton more now that I understand how you are supposed to actually play it, I still think a lot of the systems I mentioned in my original post still don't really match the game, but I now definitely have a way better grasp of the intended experience and with some tweaks I can definitely see this being a fun game.