"THANK YOU FOR SHOPPING AT RECURSION PLAZA !"
I had a lot of fun playing this.
The game looks good, I really like the pixel characters and enemies (for some reason I think pixel Trim looks a bit worse than everything else in the game), I like the portraits and the their alternative expression in dialogs and the environments, typically shops, are distinguishable and detailed enough. I like that when you integrated stock assets generally used in top down games into the environment then they fit well, I'm mentioning that because that's a problem some first person RPG makers have, with these weird big chests and so on (I know you've got one big chest or something resembling a chest but first nevermind and secondly I thought it was alright here and not exactly the same for some reason). The distinct artstyles mesh alright together. The sound feedbacks during fights are satisfying.
The story and dialogs are cool. I specially enjoyed the cliché yet unexpected conclusion of the boss' monologue after you defeat it, it could directly come from one of the Discworld books involving cosmic horror, except to be precise it's inverted (this ones are always about consumerism and people fashioning about this one last thing before the main characters discover the responsible was some horror from another world, here it's a bit of the opposite as you eventually discover there's nothing like that) or from an episode of South Park. Everything about Larry was cool, Larry's cool.
The game controls pretty well. Movement feels good and I actually like that the enemies walk in turn-based mode, I like that the game is always turn-based as a result, that would not change much but it's more cool, also they must walk very organically because I did not even notice they walked in turn-based mode at first, which is even better.
The combat system works pretty well, I like that fights are very short and lethal, and during early parts the game is not exactly easy (it's not hard either, let's not get ahead of ourselves) which is great. The shopping cart attack in the beginning of a fight is great. I like that you won't find a resting fountain in every corner (unless you're abusing the generation tool) and then get to use your consumables, there was some good resource management here, including different ways to spend your money. I liked the various "utility" pieces of equipment (double money, double XP) that you may notice or not notice in shops. The rise in power is satisfying, I was certainly overprepared for the ending part.
The dungeon parts are nothing to talk about but I really like randomly stumbling upon a specific shop and I enjoy the structure where you deal with the ending part when you think you're ready, especially with manual saving so you don't have to spend extra time preparing just to be sure you won't have to restart from the beginning, which can be a problem with such a structure when the game does not feature manual saving.
At some point I wish I could collect carts which all make an attack at the beginning of a fight then be really sad when I would sell them all at once because I needed some cash.
This is a super cool entry, thanks for sharing.