I liked this one. The world building and characters outside of the cube. The monster design being balloons and their sounds. My favorites where the simple roller, the screaming blob and the wall shield one.
The dialog in the beginning set a nice tone, but it would have been nicer still if a bit more of that had carried over into the cube somehow. The UI while speaking would have been a bit clearer if it showed which option I had just selected and waited until relevant to show me my next option when the conversation went deeper. Now it instantly let me read my next line before I had any chance to hear the answer and since my eyes where in my part because I had just selected an option, it got a little confusing.
The movement was a bit awkward at first, bit after minutes playing I didn’t think too much about it. It would probably help a lot if when pressing and holding forward, the character didn’t do stops in each cycle.
Combat was fun, but felt a bit unfair that I only got to use the crossbow once per level, it never reloaded arrows. And I had a lot of them towards the end.
I also think that if I had known (or read the description just above here before playing) how many levels there were I might have wanted to stick with it. Now even though there was some progress in the levels, they were a bit too same for me to want and really attempt to get much deeper. There was some progression in the monsters and that was fun. But It would probably help if every something level was starkly different, like a boss fight or a level that is just health potions enough to get back to full health and then steps up to next floor.
I get the reasoning behind the mapping mechanic to some degree, but it felt a bit odd in world explanation why I wouldn’t at least have been able to map out where I had been before receiving the map. And then let the map fill in the map areas that I had yet to visit. But use different coloring so it’s easy to see where I’ve been and not.
Another thing I thought about was that there was a lot of levers, but most of them, the gate was somewhere else, so it was very hard to know where to go when pulling them. It was very neat though, on some levels where I got next to the exit, but there was a gate I hadn’t open and I didn’t have the map and I could see an open way into the room and then backtrack to find the way in. That was really nice. But otherwise I think the levers ought to be close to the gates. Player doesn’t have to see them but has to at least hear them and preferably have seen them before. But it might also be enough if the gates are more clear that they are open gates after opening so the player can see them and think “Ah it must have been this gate that I opened”.
All in all, I think it was a solid game!
Raw playthrough without commentary: https://youtu.be/IgoK0GaLZ00