Thank you for the detailed feedback!
It would have been great to make an in game tutorial, but sadly we had to push to get everything completed at all. None of the basic enemies existed 24h before the deadline and we were rushing to get everything done and stable in time. We really ate up the scope creep here, and I think the game turned out well for it, but I have noticed that the accessibility is quite low for a lot of people. In hindsight it would have been good to cut a few features to make it easier to start and play, such as by adding keybinds/prompts to the UI. I tried to explain the gameplay and controls on the game page best I could, I have since added an early call to read the gameplay and controls section that will hopefully help future players!
The flower system was mainly inspired by a DS game, Kingdom Heart: 358/2 Days. It has a similar "panel" system where you unlock slots to put things in, and your entire character's power is how you fill up that grid with spells, levels, weapons, etc. I have wanted to make something using a similar system for years now, but had trouble making it fit nicely into a loop not being too simple or complex. I REALLY like the general mechanic of "you have something basic, but by fighting and exploring you can customize it to your playstyle." I want to make a "blue mage" style game someday soon!
If you are looking for another game with similar mechanics, check out "Backpack Hero" (roguelike) or "Backpack Battles" (autobattler), as the general mechanic has had a bit of popularity lately.
I'm so glad you loved the leaf hitpoints, that's another idea I've had for a while and said oh hey! it fits here!
As for characters, I've gotten a few comments now on them being visually hard to track. In part, I think the problem arose because I mostly tried to avoid outlines to keep things softer for the aesthetic, but I also sorta locked myself into a 16x24 resolution for the character sprites, and didn't want to lose the detail by adding an outline. I didn't focus on the character as much when playing, so it didn't register as something that would be a problem, sorry!
Performance was tested on Firefox and a bit on Chrome, my friend who helped play test said controller would not work at all on Vivaldi, maybe these other browsers have performance settings that are limiting things? I was very worried about the lighting causing lag but I really wanted to include it, hopefully it didn't sour the experience too much!
It has been really neat seeing everyone have DIFFERENT favorite weapons! I tried to make them all feel unique both by the different grids and the different base stats.