Thanks for taking the time to give feedback, and for playing the game!
I have a design philosophy where I want to encourage the player to experiment with the tools they have available. But there are tutorials at the start to explain spirit form and how to use it to interface with the puzzles, interacting with the first set of puzzles in normal form triggers them. If you didn't encounter those then that's a problem I need to solve. I can picture a scenario where the player uses the abilities from the menu before learning the shortcut keys, which would bypass the explanations so I'm making notes on changes to address that.
All the interiors are indeed 3d (using mode 7), but only one is a labyrinth and there's only 1 ostrich in there. The features about it you describe are all intentional to make it uncomfortable, liminal, and a bit spooky. I take inspiration from ps2 era horror for those decisions.
Thanks for taking the time to play the game and provide feedback.
I've taken some of your suggestions on board and implemented them, will update the game with them after the contest ends.
Added HP display during HP cost windows.
Fixed an issue with the bird movement logic that could cause lag for some (this is more common when the cpu is under stress, such as when streaming so I didn't see it in my own testing unfortunately).
Changed Health Orb and Essence Orb graphics to be distinct.
Reduced amount of Ostriches.
Added an additional place to recover health on the first map.
Added a clearer explanation of how to engage with the fire puzzles.
I don't entirely agree with your criticism of the fire not being in a controlled environment the first time, because the first one is in a safe location down the bottom. I designed the starting area with intention to teach the player how to rez someone straight away, then the player walks into a health orb and sees that they recover, then both puzzles down there prompt and explain the spirit form with no enemies present. But I do agree that what essence is and how it works with the fire should be more clear, so I've changed the explanation to be better. As well as updating those graphics to be more clear.
Again thanks for playing, I appreciate the critique and suggestions.
Sorry to hear you had lag trouble, I haven't experienced that on my end. But I know sometimes games made in MV will run using integrated GPU instead of the primary graphics card and that can effect performance, especially on resolutions higher than 1080p. Unfortunately I don't know a way to tell the engine not to do that by default, but there's a guide on the forums here that has a method for NVIDIA users to direct a game to use the correct card.
Thanks for checking out the game! I enjoyed your video, sorry about that bug you encountered. I've updated the game so that won't happen again in future.
