thank you so much for the feedback and kind words!
Yeah, our art director should probably have told me to lose the gate in the first place, hehe. Some cool ideas you have about substituting them!
One of my experiences from jams is that being transparent to the player and helping out so they don't get stuck is very important. Balancing that with a sense of wonder and exploration is hard. I guess some would get frustrated and just stop playing.
Glad to hear you liked the animations. I spammed animation players thus jam :-D