Really appreciate all of the feedback here - I don't think my reply will fully capture all of the insights I got out of it but please know that I got a lot of takeaways from it that will hopefully make my next game that much better - to touch on a few:
- I hadn't thought of the small, but in-hindsight, really simple/powerful approach of varying the existing enemies (things like varying skeleton projectiles). I was struggling with "I want way more enemies but this skeleton took me half a day to draw/animate, no way I can add much more within the timeline" - I think this would help that immensely and hits the nail on the head of "low effort, high payoff"
- Elements were one area that I was really struggling on "these don't feel good, I don't know how to get them to feel good though" - I think I was focusing too much on the element itself vs looking outward at things like carrying over, spawning sooner, etc like you mentioned. I expect that you're right about attacking that problem from a map/general mechanics standpoint.
- Looks like you caught a couple bugs, I had hooks in place to pause using esc and decided a pause screen was an easy scope-cut choice - clearly I should've removed those hooks haha. Also seems like I should've spent some more time on cleaning up audio; I'll need to be better about leaving a spare day for little cleanups in my next jam. I also hadn't thought of / caught the 'backdoor to starting room' trick - that's a funny oops that I hadn't thought about.
- Appreciate the commentary on potential; I'm waffling a bit on the game concept: I think there are some solid parts but also some core flaws that would be hard to get around - at a minimum I did really enjoy the art style / tone so I'm really glad to hear that you enjoyed it because I think I do want to keep exploring that for sure!