I played a little bit and I like it so far!! Stylish and strange!

I think i played some 2 hours or so of the game. Played through most part of the "bed realm" (i hope) and i'll share some opinions of what i thought.

First, kind of a minor thing, but i noticed the random encounters sound a bit off. Sometimes i give two steps and i'm already into another fight. After some time i started to run of some battles due to that. Another thing that relates to that is that i think facing four enemies at the beginning is kind of slow and takes time (although just the scribbles are fine, stan and "frog" and another two randoms take quite some time to beat). Putting more enemies to battle would work better if Almari had another member in his party and i don't know if you want to do that so soon. Also, i don't know if you want the player to grind,if it is the intention, it's fine as it is.

Almari seems to be a silent protagonist. If that's the case, putting a partner that interacts with him is a good choice. The npcs doesn't really have interesting dialogues in this beginning and a talkative character would both be good for comedy and for the player to grasp better the changes in Almari in comparison to him.

In the other bed part where there's a lot of bed with dialogues, i decided to check each one of them and, instead of a interesting dialogue about the world of the game or anything that would get me interested, i got a death as a punishment instead of a reward for exploring. I had climbed the stairs first instead of going to the left and i thought i would get a heal. When i got the game over after i have explored most of the cavern and i haven't came back to the old man to save in quite some time, i closed the game and just came back to play today. Be cautious of punishing the player for exploring when exploration is a key in the game.

To sum up, the fights are a bit slow when we face 3 or more enemies and sometimes the random encounters happen a lot. The npcs have kind of vague dialogues and is not too interesting in general. As you said you take inspiration in OFF i would recommend you think the following: In OFF, the batter speaks, but not that much, most the purification thing (that's what i remember, at least). So, to compensate that, the world has a really interesting development, the elements and stuff. In Almari, you have a silent protagonist and didn't develop the world besides that there's thoughtforms and emotion holders.

I know it may seem i didn't liked the game, but that's not the case. The beginning of the game is really important since that's the part where you have to make the player keep at your game. After that, you have to keep consistent and interesting. So, in my opinion, you should put some more efforts at the beginning so the game doesn't seem too plain. I know that almari doesn't have any feelings at the beginning and because of that he isn't that useful of a protagonist right now, but i'm pretty sure you can think of something to make that first part better.

When i get to play more of it i may give you more opinions. For now, i think that's all i can think of.

Oh man, how'd I ever miss this??? I loved seeing this on Starmen, I adore how you accomplished the art style