Day 7:
It has been a long one! I've been working 24 hours straight to meet the deadline which is just now past - and the game is a success! I will package everything up for download after a bit of a break because I'm exhausted. I've also been dealing with a stupid swollen thumb from the bee sting.
Overall, the game came out better than I expected, I had low hopes at one point - as mentioned earlier, I wasn't really sure what direction to push the stealth mechanics, and through the week I was worried it would end up too combaty and samey as some of my past games, but it definitely isn't. Whether or not the new stealthy mechanics are any good though is up to you all! Your hero has very low health, and while he can go toe-to-toe with any one enemy, needs multiple enemies worth of blood to heal just one HP. There's lots of luring and cat-and-mouse with enemies, dashing out of view and then chasing them up from behind with a back-stab when they give up the fight.
Unfortunately I had to backtrack a bit on the planned abilities - I removed the spell book I had from the Day 2 gif, and simplified the UI and controls for 6 locked in abilities. These are available from game start, although 4 of the 6 cost blood from fallen enemies. There is no real character progression, however the world progresses instead - the enemies get harder, and the challenge increases.
Will update soon with the itch page, and include there all the fancy finished product gifs :)