If Mabis Beacon came from the abyss, with a very limited vocabulary, and became a Wizard, that would be this game. You revived a part of my childhood that I never wanted to remember, truly a cosmic horror! haha
Seriously though, I played it until the end, and the gimmick worked really well here! This is definitely one of my favorites so far in terms of execution and novelty.
Things I enjoyed:
-The spelling gimmick was good here!
-I think the prose was excellent, and the whole thing was clever well done!
-Controls were smooth and felt good to play
-The art was solid and felt at home
-The tree and spell acquisition mechanics also felt like a welcome addition!
-I love how you got the typing and voice system working; it was fun to play with randomly!
Room for improvement:
-Variety and variance! I know this is really hard to pull off in a jam, but the typing gimmick had outstayed its welcome after about 10 minutes when I realized all there was to the combat was combining the two easiest spells that would add up to kill the monster. Damage type, different effects, a way to modify the words, a mechanic that made you solve the fights in a limited number of turns, anything like this would have been a massive enhancement in my opinion.
Music and sound effects! If you had more time to incorporate some really good BGM tracks and more interesting sound effects, you could definitely elevate this significantly.
-More player choices! I wanted to have the ability to do something else that was deterministic; the whole experience did feel a little too "on rails."
Overall, though, I loved it; great submission!