Nice atmosphere, but: 1)controls seem a bit sticky/unresponsive, 2)whether enemies respawn when you die seems inconsistent, 3)after I fixed the bridge on the left and got the shard there, it teleported me back to the center and reset everything: enemies were alive again, bridge was no longer fixed. Annoying since I wanted to keep exploring in that direction and there seemed to be no reason for the bridge to be gone again, 4)then when I took it as a hint that I was done there and went all the way to the right instead (staying up top, instead of climbing down the pole thing), I got to the edge of the screen, kept going--expecting a new screen--and instead fell all the way to the bottom, without dying and apparently without being able to move or do anything (my character was not visible at this point). Reloading, I found that I no longer had the shard.
I like this! The platforming/controls feel good, and the art is really nice (the color changing is a nice touch!). I also appreciate that the enemies don't have the typical "touch of death" thing and it takes a moment for them to actually bite you, so you can run past them. But since you have to stand still to shoot, they're not *too* unthreatening.
And the sound design is nicely eerie.
I'd enjoy this more if it weren't for the constant distraction of the walkthrough link wiggling. I would say I can't even pause for two seconds to line up a jump without it deciding I must be stuck, but... it even does it while I'm actively progressing! And honestly the ideal frequency for that kind of thing is "never": sometimes you want to pause and take stock or figure out the timing for something or wait for an enemy to move or even just screw around a bit, so there's no specific thing the player might be doing that actually means they need help. The link is prominent enough without shaking several times a level.
Also, early game tip: The necromancers are probably the best class that you get right off the bat. You get a decent summon that you can have fight all the enemies for you (a character still gets unlocked if a summon kills it for you), you get a straight-line magic attack for backup, and you can cure yourself if you screw up. Solid. It's also fun to just drop skellies onto people's heads. Though, you need something with the "flying" trait at some point, since there are places you can't reach otherwise. (Flying is much better than you'd think based on how enemies use it.)
And if you're moving up or down when you make a ranged attack, it goes at an angle. Also, magic attacks bounce off of walls and you can get enemies with the rebound. So, you can sit on top of a ledge where they can't even see you and attack downwards by jumping and making the attack before you hit the ground (or, as a flying creature, hover above them and attack while falling). Very handy, usually very safe!
@aetheriust - The purple elemental lets you use *almost* the same strategy, but better: it has an attack that turns enemies into cubes of purpleness, and it also has a somewhat weak punch attack with a short cooldown. So you can turn them into a cube, dodge the "purpleness" attacks which are now the only thing they can do (absolutely necessary or I assume you'll run into the same problem again and have to refresh--BUT, the attack is slow and has that cooldown, so it's not hard to dodge), and punch them to death. I beat all the dragons and the final boss like that without any trouble. Cheap, but funny.
Could use some more explanation of what some things do. Like: Thermal resistance. I don't have a good idea of what the number actually means. If it's at 60 (for example) does that mean that your drill can ignore 60 points of thermal damage from every "hit" of thermal damage? That seems painfully low for the lower levels where temperatures are in the thousands. Also, the shield slot item. Does that just absorb the given amount of (non-thermal) damage? But I've seen durability go down when my shield was still active and I still had thermal defense left, so there's obviously something I don't get about how it works. It "feels" like the shield helps a lot, but I can't really tell if having the shield at 40000 is better or worse than (or the same as) just having an extra 40000 durability.
My strategy for getting brilliant on level 14 was to stick Hellfire Temples on the high ground near both entrances. The "daze" effect slowed the ninja down enough for me to hit several times with meteor.
I also placed catapult dens and chilling crypts on all the tiles closest to the entrances (though I don't think the crypts hit--no freeze or fear), and towers around the entrances to the dens.
I know ONE of those things helped, since that ninja has 2500 hp and the most I could have taken off its health with meteor is 2000 hp, and the hellfire temple only does 282 damage (on high ground, plus I have 32 skill points invested in the Demon tree and the "Height Advantage" skill maxed out). So that leaves at least 218 damage that must have been from other towers. Probably a bit more since I don't think I actually used meteor all five times. I'm not sure which, though, since I was focused on meteoring and not watching towers.
A couple of minor complaints: First, I miss having my stats visible all the time, like in the first game. A little box like what you get for enemies, would be SO helpful and convenient. As it was I found myself doing a lot of switching between the main screen and the equipment screen to figure out if I was equipped correctly for a particular enemy. And since swapping out your equipment to defend against specific enemies seems to be a big part of the strategy, it would be nice if you could save equipment sets to switch between all at once. If there were a button on the inventory screen that would let you save your current set to a hotkey, that would be ideal. It's satisfying to work out what combination of items will make you invulnerable against a particular enemy and then get to watch them just plink away without doing anything to you, but it gets tedious to switch out several items manually multiple times a level (enough that sometimes I didn't bother and just let them hit me).
Tip that I just figured out: if you click on your potion counter in the upper left it tells you what the effects are. (I also didn't realize multiple potions with different magnitudes of the same effect got averaged.)
I really liked the enchantment/crafting system (I think it's awesome that you can just keep adding enchantments to items indefinitely and overriding previous enchantments, even the ones they came with. Keep your stuff upgraded!), ability to... uncurse... items, storyline (it was just about the right combination of "interesting" and "optional", though I too would have liked a way to save pages and maybe see if there were any I'd missed), skill tree, VASTLY better interfaces, (the comparison thing especially is really helpful, especially once I noticed that it was actually showing me what my new stats would be with the new item).
And it was pretty great when the end boss reacted to my use of the pickaxe to get around an enemy I didn't feel like fighting.
 "SOLUNA"){kind=icon}
 "ASCIIvania"){kind=icon}
 "One Arrow (Ludum Dare 28)"){kind=icon}
 "Jo and Momo: Forest Rush"){kind=icon}
 "Great Dungeon in the Sky"){kind=icon}
 "Home"){kind=icon}
 "Reach the core"){kind=icon}
 "Cursed Treasure: Don't Touch My Gems!"){kind=icon}
 "Cursed Treasure 2"){kind=icon}
 "The Enchanted Cave 2"){kind=icon}