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That was a detailed and thoughtful reply, thanks. I see many of the things I mentioned are just things you are working on. Having a tight inventory is fair at the end of the day, I should've used the stash to store excess potions. Also I wish I found auto-loot, it's really convenient. An idea regarding that; maybe auto-loot potions only of the same level or above to what the player is carrying? Or have a tunable option of some sort. At a certain point I've stopped collecting/using potions that aren't grand. Thing is I've played a bit more since leaving the review and I did use the leveled up spells, since that was the only way left to get higher damage. I ended up investing most of my skill points in in extra mana and mana regen to be able to handle that. Chaining and multiple projectiles are very nice. I can permastun and melt any enemy group now, regardless of size. In the end I leveled to max and have 7 stacks of cash. Here's a brief video showing my situation:

https://files.catbox.moe/i50wdh.webm

Also now that I read the explanation, the mp/sp cost of spells makes sense. A little bit of unintuitiveness is inevitable; people will mess around and find what works, or else browse some wiki for minmaxing like for any other game. So yeah, looking forward to seeing further development!

Godot 5 will fix this. I hope. I don't know what could be causing  that honestly...

I played this for a while as a mage. I enjoyed it enough to play it for more than an hour. The following are just my opinions and I'm not an experienced gamer or game developer so take them with a grain of salt.

Well, a few things are: the ui needs some work (especially the skills menu is confusing) and the style doesn't really fit the fantasy theme, although I assume you're aware of that. I'd like to be able to carry more weight (or at least make the potions lighter. 20 potions for health, 20 for mana occupy 80% of space and I don't think that's such an outrageous amount to carry) and the spells need some variety imo. I'm not a great fan of the skyrim approach to elemental spells being separate but essentially all the same except for some minor side-effect. How about this: you get one active "energy orb" skill that you can combine with elemental support skills like "poison", "fire", "cold". Or just make the projectiles different enough for a separation to make sense (like for lightning)

But that's not the main problem: your spell system and interface is confusing as hell. While playing I did not realize that it was extremely stupid to level up my lightning bolt skill as I could achieve the same effect buying the passive lightning mastery skill with the same effect which however does not drain additional mana at cast. You see, in 99% of video games "level up" means "gets better", here I'd argue it gets worse. In my playthrough I found that using anything over lvl 2-3 was just not cost efficient, as a big chunk of damage was due to INT anyway and the added value had a big spread (1:3) making it feel unreliable. Gambling a third of your mana when taking a shot isn't wise. Also I did not realize projectile skills were both active and support at the same time. I did read the explanation in the menu, it just did not clear that up for me... And right now I'm combining a 2 mana bolt with a 2 mana "chain shot" support and the resulting cost is 6 mana+1 stamina. How? Why? Another thing is the way you present the classes is a bit disorienting to me. I would've been less confused by having a central menu showing all the classes and then each class leading back to that screen. You also have an "inquisitor" tab with no skills. You should've changed that tab's name to "Nodev". Get it? Nodevs... have no skills! haha...

Coins are a bit difficult to pick up. Sometimes I click them and they don't get picked up. I don't know maybe it's just the hitbox being a little too small or something. In titan quest there's a key shortcut for picking up all the stuff that you obviously want such as gold and potions. You could do that, or maybe make the gold get picked up automatically within some moderately large range to speed up the process. 

I've found that running in a circle around an enemy confuses him so much he doesn't do anything but spin around, he doesn't shoot or move. It doesn't affect gameplay since I need to stop to cast, but it's just a little silly I guess. (I had 10%+ movespeed btw).

Enemies sometimes miss when casting the clouds of poison smoke. They cast it behind me occasionally. Just letting you know if this is not intentional. Also it doesn't really make sense to give enemies spells with multiple shots since I'm just one player anyway, but I guess that's really a nitpick.

Overall I still enjoyed it to some extent. I'm looking forward to playing this in feature demo days.

Shanking in the fog? Are you british or what?

I like the idea. Rock paper scissors is fun but very simple, so building something more complex from that concepts is cool. I managed to play against myself but I couldn't really figure out the exact rules. Also personally I'm not that much into the theme of chess-likes with health bars, but some have become quite popular

There is just one thug,  but he loops over and over if you don't defeat him. You have to block his attacks (RMB) which shouldn't be hard as they are very regular. After you defeat him there should be a "cutscene" like in the beginning.

They say the word is mightier than the sword, so a book armed with a sword must be the mightiest of them all

Please reduce the book hitbox, slow down the sword movement, and make it so the sword doesn't shake when it hits the mace. Adding just a little bit of inertia to the sword might be a nice touch.

I do like how the game looks. Most atmospheric phone minigame

Have you considered changing the title to "3 hp to wipe them all?" Haha, just kidding!

I honestly really liked the gameplay, despite not being very good at it (only once reached wave 4). Stuff like the delay before the (very wide) attacks start, the enemy types, the shield and reduced movement, it all ties together well IMO. I did use the shield, it worked against the large enemies of wave 2 which would kill me if I tried to sword them.

Gameplay wise I only have one thing to say: you seem to be heading down the path of "Struggling with wave 5? Have fun doing the first four waves over and over again just to get another shot at it". If you are going to make the player die in 1 hit, then death should not be too punishing IMO: you should either not loose a lot of progress OR it should be easy not to die. Or you could just not care about it and filter the casuals, it is your choice how noob-friendly you want it to be.

As for ideas about stuff to add... I feel like there are a lot of possibilities. Area damage spells, paralyzing/slowing down spells, spells that repel one type of enemies but not another, temporary barrier spells (to cover your back), a pet dog. Different weapons. Or how about this: a spell to transform into a dragon! Ok, I think that's enough ideaguing for today.

Anyway, looking forward to seeing this next demodays!

Quite neat, leaves me wanting for more levels/complexity

Since there are so many sidescrollers about jumping around already I wanted to try to put less focus on that aspect in this game, also, it's not like mages are famous for their athletics. So the way jumping works is a bit of an experiment: You jump when you release the up button. The longer you've held it down, the higher the jump (up to 1 second or so). You also cannot change your momentum while in the air.

I'll have to see if by explaining it better and implementing the celeste platforming tricks it becomes tolerable. If not, I'll just give up and implement standard jumping.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by up and down movement, but if you mean something like the last stand (flash game) I don't think I will go there unless coming up with levels becomes too difficult with how things are now.

What do you mean by "perspective that the scenario has"? Anyway, I'd be interested in playing some old beat 'em ups if you think they are relevant to my game; which would you recommend? As for the giant farmers, I'm not sure I'm going to keep that fight, but if I do it needs work

What did you find particularly hard? What part? If it's when you're charged by many villagers, then the secret is getting the powerup in time. If it's the final boss, then don't worry as it's currently really buggy and I will change it. Anyway, I agree on the hay bales. Generally I had to cut some corners to make it for dd with something resembling a level, but ideally I'd want to also give each character a death animation.

JUMPING IS WEIRD! READ THIS: 1. You jump when you release the up key. The longer you've been pressing it, the higher the jump 2. You can't change your trajectory in mid air. So you have to take running jumps to jump on stuff 3. Floor detection sucks on wheat rolls. Sorry