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Hi Barako, thanks as always for your review.

Difficulty is a tricky thing to tune. I got a third party to playtest it before release and they reached the goblin boss within 15 minutes and beat him after a couple of attempts. The main feedback I received from the playtester was the recovery items from pots weren't potent enough to offset the damage taken while killing enemies, so I raised the recovery amount, but left everything else as is.

Regarding the low range of the dagger and the difficulty fighting enemies immune to knockback like the sand slimes, that was intentional - there are two more weapons found in the next area after the goblin boss: A Spear with more than twice the range but a longer recovery after striking and a Club that always adds knockback but can't be thrust, requiring good swing timing.

The goblin boss is sort of the end of the "introduction" area, combining behaviors from earlier enemies. He has the same blind spot as the arrow goblins where the player can position to avoid the arrows while still striking the enemy. He also retreats each time the player character swings. He's designed to be challenging if you panic and start running in circles but easy if you keep your nerve and control the encounter with careful movement. You almost had him! 

There's a flowchart of the entire game's maps in the Omake folder.

I might reuse this action system for future jams. I think it has a lot of remaining potential. I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it.

Hi Barako, thank you so much for your review!

I think I made a design mistake by putting an optional skip in front of the cutscene/tutorials. The first time the player flees, there is a new scene where the fairies are introduced, monster capture is unlocked and there's an explanation given of the bonus icons and the special rules for the fairies. You skipped that when it came up and missed it all. Sorry! There's a strategy.txt in the game folder that explains some of the mechanics if you want to check without restarting. You can also launch it in the editor with Show Console turned on to see more detailed logging of the mechanics.

Since I've got a few hours before the jam closes I'll do a quick update that takes the skip out (the whole cutscene is only a minute or two long anyway) and I'll see if I can fix the npc dialog. 

You also wondered if all the sprite art was made during the jam - yes, all the art assets were made after the jam started, but I used image generation to do it. There's a full list of the models and tools in the credits.txt along with some wips in the Omake folder.

Also yes I wanted to have dialog for all the monsters recruited back at camp, but I realized pretty early I wouldn't have time to write it all for 50+ monsters so it's just left as just a way for the player to check the deck and see what they've already "caught".