One of the best entries I've played.
Art and animation are stellar. Everything is well done, the place looks alive and conveys the dark mood.
Character controller is almost perfect. The only thing I found lacking was the absence of grace jump, so if the player is at the very edge of a platform, he doesn't register as grounded. Not brilliant for areas with precision jumping. But, given the slow pace of the locomotion and the immediate and close by restarts, this wasn't a big problem at all.
Combat was surprisingly engaging, perhaps slightly weakened by the instantaneous and infinite respawns.
I think the theme has been explored effectively and on multiple layers of depth. The Death cave and the Purity cave, the deliberate misdirection, the fact that you don't know you can shoot until later, which informs New Game +, the fact that you can kill NPCs and destroy pickups really made this shine.
Audio was solid as well, with great music that set the tone and informative and fitting SFX.
Very well done.
Viewing post in Mendacium jam comments
First of all, thank you so much for this in-depth comment! It really means a lot to us to see someone investing time and putting effort into discovering all the little secrets and hidden meanings of the game.
Secondly, we of course appreciate the constructive feedback regarding the grace jump. We will definitely fix that and update the game after the jam ends and make sure that we focus more on polishing character controls for the future games.