This was strangely a lot more enjoyable than I anticipated from the first few seconds. At first I thought it was a straight gag game -- you die immediately because you're a level 1 goblin and that's the joke. I was curious to see if I could run away from the player so I ran and hid over in the room the player came from, and fell into the void.
I was about to quit when I realized that the paladina actually had a health bar, and my allies were actually doing considerable damage. Not enough to win in the end without my help, but enough to make me realize that this was an achievable goal.
On restart, I noticed the game world was much larger than I thought. Plenty of places to run at least, and the paladina actually does get distracted instead of mercilessly hunting you down.
Difficulty is a tough thing to balance. If the paladina was too easy to defeat, this game would be pointless and boring. Too difficult, and this would be impossible and frustrating. Worse, that balance will be different for each player, and because the game is supposed to be difficult, a difficulty selector doesn't really work here. For me, the balance was great.
You had to learn a route, know where to run and when, how long to throw barrels for, etc. With your only attacks being a jank throwing mechanic, you have to rely on your allies, but they're limited and can only do so much for you. Ultimately, you have to manage both in tandem.
If you do fall in the basement too early, you're pretty much toast -- you'd think you could've put in like a real staircase instead of two weird white floating rectangles.
Idk, I'm a fan of jank 1 hit kill super hard games like "I Wanna Be the Guy" so this appealed to me.