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The dither/grain actually looks kinda neat. It might be interesting when fullscreen on a PC, where the extreme up-scaling might make things look too blocky.

I'm glad to see you've made it to this point already and I look forward to playing the final entry. Be sure to test on hardware/emulator often!

My goal with my entry is to try to fit in as much gameplay as possible. For now, this means everything will be text-only, and graphics would come in a post-jam version of the game. This also means that I'm going to start off with an impossibly-large game design (can't have scope creep if the scope is already infinite!) then prioritize so that the minimum feels like a complete game and anything else is an optional add-on (because everyone loves day-one DLCs, right?)

Basic game idea:

Inspired by isekai and Japanese dungeon crawlers like Shin Megami Tensei, Mugen Tentou is a game where you climb a perilous tower and each floor is a maze filled with both enemies and other adventurers. Level up and collect loot by defeating your opponents as you climb higher and higher with no hope of ever reaching the top; they don't call it the "Mugen Tentou" for nothing!

Basic Mechanics:

- The game time advances in "ticks". Each movement or battle action counts as one tick. If the player does not choose an action within a given amount of time, a random action is chosen automatically.

- Character creation: Every character has a name, race, faction, affinities, gender, stats (speed, luck, strength, stamina, magic?), party and inventory. Every level up grants a certain amount of stat points. Character names will be randomly generated, based on race and gender. Factions define a set of affinities. Affinities define who that character will be friendly/neutral/hostile towards.

- Each level is a 32x32 matrix of rooms represented by a set of flags that determine the contents of the room.

- When entering a room, if opposing parties are present, a battle begins. Any neutral parties may take part as they see fit. Participation in battles may affect alignment between those involved.
- Battles occur in turns, sorted by each character's speed.

- Defeated parties drop random items from their inventory. How many depends on the dropper's and the looter's luck stats. Defeated parties respawn in their alliance's safe room of that floor, if they have enough gold to bribe the boatman to turn a blind eye. 

- If neutral or friendly parties meet in the same room, they can buy/sell/give items or talk. Giving items or selling them at a discounted price may affect alignment. Talking provides valuable information to the player, but is done using the in-game language that is different every playthrough, providing an authentic isekai experience.

Lookit those big eyes. Don't make 'em cry, man. Make 'er happy. Give her some stars. Vote 5/5.

Looks to me like one thing that is making balancing hard is how tall the catcher thingy is. Because of this, player movement looks clumsy, like you're trying to maneuver a truck through a bunch of snowflakes and beachballs... or something.

Another thing: the graphics are a bit too abstract, I can't tell what you're supposed to collect and what you're supposed to dodge. Ideally, bad things should look bad/evil/menacing. If you need a screen to explain to the player what is good/bad, that probably means your graphics are not intuitive. If you manage to get rid of the tutorial because the graphics are self-explanatory, you'll be able to add more obstacle types easily. Stuff that moves more quickly, in a zig-zag, or suddenly changes column once, will be harder to dodge... and if it looks evil, the player will naturally try to dodge it.

A good example is one of the Mario games: whenever a new enemy shows up, the player generally doesn't think "is that something I should pick up, or run away from?"

I love the look, it really is a pixelart xilogravura! And I'm looking forward to seeing how you tell the story.

Curti!

This is really interesting... I'll definitely have a look at the GBDK after this jam!

Maybe Bosca Ceoil? http://boscaceoil.net/

Looking around, it seems it was pretty common to have sprites that weren't 8x8... in the Pokemon screenshot above, the Pikachu and the Eevee are probably bigger than even 16x16. If bending the rules was acceptable then, why bother with having a grid now?

Top-down it looks completely incomprehensible. Besides, it was just a test to see how easy it would be to implement a dithering fragment shader. I actually have no idea what I'm going to do for this jam, yet.

So... this would be a no-no? XD