What Lies Below encapsulates this 48 hour game jam's theme of mismatch extraordinarily well with it's introductory section leading the player to believe they will be playing into the common trope of playing as a demon vs a hero.
This deception starts earliest from the game's page itself that this experience will be one similar to The Binding of Issac or Super Meat Boy with the protagonists design being similar & overall aesthetic of the artwork at a first glance. Only for the game's title moment to happen in the intro & completely leaves the player delightfully surprised as it subverts the idea in a very comical & whimsical way that is propelled by the excellent sound design choices that is contrasted with the initial tone of the starting BGM that fits for the setting of the intro.
What Lies Below does all this while still maintaining elements of horror in the later section of the game & still being able to again subvert the players notion that they are now collecting cats rather than avoiding them with the counter on the top right.
Gameplay wise as someone whose experienced in platformers I accustomed to the controls & finished the game in 7 minutes. Though I very much believe that the objective of climbing ladders was poorly communicated once the subversion of collecting cats occured as I could easily see someone not knowing what to do after that part of the game happens. This could easily be fixed by having the player character have a dialog box with text that expresses the monster's motivation to get back & confront the hero.
I feel like as if it's done differently than what I mentioned ie by having the game tell you once you're in that section, the subversion loses it's potency with it's collecting cats mechanic that players are naturally going to first do rather than pursue the exit.
I'm really excited to see what this team will do in the future should they decide to pursue this project further in the future or were to create new work as this was a really well made experience given the time constraint.