While I want to believe the stated "no generative AI was used", the presence of mixels and heavy inconsistencies in art style to me say this wasn't made by a human.Like what's going on with that chicken and the other stickers; they're beyond crunchy?  Why do the book tabs have *three* different styles? Why does the art change so much between various elements?  If you didn't make this solo, you might want to take a hard look at your artist, because there's red flags aplenty. :(  Hopefully I'm wrong, but it's enough to make me not want to play this just in case it's slop.

A fun little game, though a little frustrating.  Putting upgrades behind overall floor level unlocks when you can't see what overall floor level you're on is very unintuitive.  Upgrade tree unlocks should either be regulated by experience points available (which currently you gain exp much faster than skill upgrades are available; this needs more balance), or by which overall layer you're on.  I think optimizing and streamlining the skill tree would boost the play experience quite a bit.

Also, light levels are kind of annoying to work with, as you can't really see what you're doing for a long time, and you're just clicking in a small section of the map fairly blindly.  Light items don't seem to help much, especially the hanging light, which doesn't seem to do anything?

The rest of the map doesn't get used much, there doesn't really feel like much reason for it to exist at the moment, beyond occasional events.  Not sure what the best fix would be for the game experience, whether to add more interest to it, or to make the overall map size smaller.

I finished the game, I'm not sure how long it took (just realized there is a timer in the corner. ~2 hrs). I played on the web version. I used the hold mode for mining.

At some points I found the game frustrating. When every upgrade is locked behind a room level, the currency and skill points felt completely pointless, especially because I was never at a stage where I didn't have enough money or skillpoints to buy all available upgrades. At that point, it felt like I may as well automatically get the upgrades. And I couldn't tell whether I had met the prerequisite for a level, so would have to click individually on all the green and grey upgrades to check whether or not it was available. It would be nice to have maybe a little icon in the corner of the store and upgrades tab when you have met the floor prerequisite to buy something. The game ends up seems like it wants to be an idle game when it has the pet pickaxes that attack the rock but just does so little that they are useless (when then even do choose to attack the rock or they will just sit and do nothing).

A bug with the UI i kept on having from the very start is that the text would not appear in the boxes and it would be blank and i would hover my mouse over the buttons again to have the text appear, like the 'Go to next room' text or the 'depth, relics, eggs' text. At one point, when i clicked the depth button and zoomed out a little the game froze and i could not press any of the buttons to go back and i had to restart the game. The 'Light Movement' button did not work, the light would not go in circles around the hand like the text implied, it just stayed following the cursor like before. I think that the pets are supposed to pick up the materials on the ground, but sometimes in the later levels especially after that event where every block has an ore, they would not collect anything and I'd just do it manually. 

When there are relics and eggs available, I think it would be nice if they had a little bit of a glow. because I didn't even bother looking for the relics and eggs when i realized i could buy the ones i missed in the shop because it would take so much time to find them for little benefit. In terms of the games appearance, I think that it is very pretty. I like the art. I don't think that any of the UI really fits the art style of the game though, I think it would benefit if it was drawn the same style as everything else. A Hide UI button would be nice (unless there is?) because everything is very crowded on the screen. I believe the pets and pickaxes should have some sort of waddle animation when they move, because the fairy lights sway and the light that goes to your hand floats up and down a little, making the pets end up seeming lifeless in comparison. 

I am sorry if i sound very negative, I was looking for a game so that i could procrastinate instead of doing work and this was excellent at doing that lol. Good luck on your continued work of the game. I have not done a comment before but if i need to be more clear with my words please tell me. I hope this is helpful feedback.

When i click on a slot to start a new game it does nothing and shows corrupted save. 

Granted, I do have poor vision, but I got to the end of the first level, or I assume so, I killed all the blocks, then what?   Nothing seems to do anything.   Sorry, but the first time you clear a board if you have to do something to reset it, MAKE IT OBVVIOUS WHAT TO DO.  I quit this without upgrading anything and now I think this is one of the worst games I played this year and I gave it basically 0 chance.   It sucks.   You click some blocks to make them go away and get nothing for it.   Yay....

It would be nice if the upgrades with tiers that are still not maxed to have a different colour eg blue- not unlocked, green - partially unlocked, yellow - maxed 

so a player would be able to tell at a glance when zoomed out which upgrades need additional leveling

Hey I have encounterd this bug where the shop zones dissapear untill I restart the game

will this have some kind of helpers pickeaxes or like that to help u ? 

sorry but what are the coins for?

Love the idea and execution. Very interesting build!