Hero's Last Hurrah

This game is awesome, one of the best in the jam!  It looks like an RPG, but it's secretly a point-and-click adventure game! :O

Out of all the games I've played for this game, this one has the hardest-hitting narrative twists.  Even when you know something's off or vaguely what the consequences for a certain decision will be, the way it's executed still makes it feel like a gut punch, and there were a couple things that caught me completely off-guard while still making sense.  The progression was great too!

The battles are all about figuring out the right tool for a specific job rather than executing strategically intensive fights or gaining power over the enemies.  This ties in well with the narrative, making you really feel your low power level.  I'm impressed that the "final boss" of sorts is able to bring this type of gameplay to a satisfying conclusion instead of feeling like an awkward slightly harder puzzle or something.

Since you explicitly asked for constructive criticism, I'll point out a couple things I noticed that I think could be improved:

• Even after the children leave the town, the window in the Inn room still mentions them playing outside.
• The tablet is incorrect unless I'm misunderstanding something about how these puzzles work.  I think I know what it's supposed to say, but the first two characters on the left half of the tablet don't line up with what they're supposed to be on the right half.  If this intended as an additional twist, I'd leave it out since most people playing won't have much experience solving these puzzles.
• The resource-management aspect doesn't really work because you can walk almost anywhere you want and you don't need to use consumables much during any fights.  But you also can't just drop it entirely since the decision about whether to donate is important.  I don't think this game needs to be "about" resource management, but I do think that asking the player to regularly use one or two healing items during the otherwise "solved" fights would be a good idea.  I'd also remove the status healing items from the shop unless I'm unaware of a specific use case for them.  The stun item probably doesn't need to be there either unless it's intended as an alternate puzzle solution.  This would more or less guarantee that the player will buy the healing items they need to get through fights while still giving breathing room to donate extra seeds.

Wow, this one's a contender for my favorite of the whole jam. It's seriously great!...Was already my opinion. And then I decided to brute force the tablet puzzle, which was a ton of fun! I don't know if there was any additional info aside from that one letter, and I'm definitely still in the dark for some of the words, but I JUST managed to eke out enough of the words to discover what to do! I then did a quick second run with that knowledge, just to see the silliness that ensues.

I did run into a bug. You can run away from the multibeast and flee to the cave even if you haven't beaten the guardian yet (and maybe to the other locations? I didn't try those), which lets you skip getting the axe. Also, if you wait to grab the soap after you sleep, you can keep it throughout the whole game. I was slightly disappointed that it didn't have any effect on the boss that covers you in oily residue. In any case, I ended with the dog and owl medals. Can't even begin to imagine where you get the others.

This one was great! It was satisfying figuring out the sequence of stuff you had to do to progress both in the world and in combat. The streamlined combat gave it a puzzle-like texture I enjoyed. I dug the whole narrative arc and some of the ways things paid off as the game progressed. The teleport spots in the tower were such a good touch. It was cool following up with the NPCs and seeing their whole deal throughout the game. The whole end game and conclusion was cool. Felt like a full package in a couple hours.

I did encounter 3 things which seem to be bugs to me! [MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD] The first one is probably the biggest: I missed an early tree-related trigger that allows you to get a weapon, which means I could not defeat the wood guardbot, but I *was* able to defeat the copper and alloy guardbots using barehand attacks, which I believe is a sequence break, which sort of softlocked me at first, and I had to start over. The second one was when talking to the red warrior in the cave after the townsfolk first arrive at the cave, after his dialogue ends and he does the jumping animation the game seems to hardlock and you can't move or open the menu. The third one is the most minor, Rosa still seems to be in the cave after everyone leaves near the end, not sure if that was intentional or not. 

I'm super impressed!! This was such a special adventure! Thank you so much for making this, I loved every part of it. Great writing and a really satisfying progression. Unless another game gets in at the last minute, I think this might be my favourite out of all the jam entries. Although there's some really tough competition there!

Oh, and tiny bug report: one of the signs on the outside of the item shop is set to non solid, so you can walk on it.