Excellent stuff! Love the use of one toolkit of spells to sort of paint a palette of creatures that have a distinct sorta... idunno, texture to them? I kind of love it when RPGs are built out with an obvious pile of blocks like that. And then you get to play with the blocks! What could be better, really.
For anyone else reading: took me just a few hours to beat, involves a lotta sniffing around to find the last few sticks but if you run dry on immediate leads you get a lot of good options to find guidance. The battle formulas are super straightforward and easy to understand if you look close, and there's a few interesting consequences of how spells and stats are set up!