Thank you very much for your comprehensive and detailed review. We are very pleased that you enjoyed the game. Thank you for pointing out a small performance issue with the light shader. We noticed it before submitting, debugged some control issues, and also reduced the number of yellow companions to improve performance. Seems not enough.
In terms of visual style. We had a colleague who happened to join us online for the jam, but he gave up on Saturday. So we ended up using less polished placeholder visuals. Personally, I like the contrast the visuals create. The cold reality (light, shadow and texture) contrasted with the warm and colourful geometric abstraction of the characters. It just happened in a natural way, like a jam in music, when some of the jam participants are brought together. But I definitely agree with your comment. I look forward to designing visuals for the further development of this game. I like your suggestion to keep the visual style simple. We had the game "Thomas Was Alone" as a visual inspiration in our moodboard :) and I think we want to continue that way.
Thanks again for your review and also for your great game!