This quest is charming. In my mind, it's an ideal representation of what a brief contest quest ought to be. It stays within its small scope and makes the most of the format to deliver a lovely bite-sized story.

In games with limited dialogue space, I really value the concepts of "environment as narrative" and "gameplay as narrative." Regarding the former, the excellent screen detailing and somber music really help to set the tone and emotion. With the latter, I think there's a lot of significance in playing these two characters as a team, and the fact that they each excel in different situations. You end up really feeling the relationship between Ito and Nita through the way you lean on one or the other of them at different times, just like they have to trust and depend on each other to get through all the challenges. I also found the dramatic stuff from the end of the third dungeon through the ending to be quite effective. The relationship of the brothers is at the center of this game's story, and it's done really well.

There were a few design choices that hit me a bit wrong, and I think some players will be put off by the challenge level and unorthodox save system. For me, the only thing I found truly frustrating was the moldorm boss. The twin patras were challenging at first, but approaching them with different characters and weapons made for a much easier fight. The moldorms just always felt irritating, and with a rematch tucked behind a mandatory 3 blue wizzrobe kill ... it ain't great. I think they would be better if they had better checking as they surfaced so they didn't appear too close to the player, and if the shots either moved slower or had a hesitation before they moved. A slight HP reduction also wouldn't hurt, imo.

But overall, I found it to be a great experience. Highly recommended.

An enjoyable quest for sure, providing a fun challenge and a wonderfully bite-size experience for the player. I streamed the quest, and so most of my thoughts can be found throughout that play-through, but I'll note a few things here anyways.

The dungeons are pretty fun, and I found there to be many creative concepts threaded into the game-play experience. Nothing felt too 'gimmicky', and everything felt like it served a purpose. The story, for what it was, had been enjoyable, and felt fleshed out enough for such a small quest as this. Difficulty-wise, there were a few bumps, but nothing seemed impossible and the save-system felt like a welcome addition. The script-work felt polished, and paired with the lovely screen design, the quest felt relatively professional.

The only real gripe I have is the fact that, once you get to a boss and you find it to be too challenging, you'll need to backtrack your way out of the dungeon - it'd be nice if there was a portal connecting the pre-boss room to the entrance. Other than that, the quest was pretty great, and I appreciate how each of the characters were specialized to deal with specific threats.

Good work, it was fun to play!

I quite liked this. It was small enough to play in one sitting and felt just the right size for the complexity of its ideas. In particular:
- The character switching is neat, and I like that each brother has a particular niche.
- The screen design is beautiful.
- Dungeons feel pretty solid.. I especially loved the puzzles in the first dungeon and was a bit bummed the other dungeons didn't have similarly neat ideas.
- The enemies are also simple but creative. Special mention to the Ghini/Stalfos pairs.
- The story is simple but pretty cool. The writing did a good job characterizing the protagonists in limited space. There was a single instance in the scene at the end of the first dungeon that felt slightly spell-it-out-ish, but I think the writing worked well overall.

As far as the death mechanics go, I... don't actually hate them? I think quests with lost progress on death can be very tricky to balance, but this one turned out okay. There were one or two spots that felt a bit save-point starved, and I do wish HP drops were a bit more frequent, but it felt alright overall and kept the tension just high enough.

There are a few things that stood out as areas for improvement, so I figured I'd list those out.
- The biggest thing for me was the enemy density. Like Ether mentioned, the rooms do feel pretty crowded. I liked that overall, it combined well with the death mechanics and forced you to pay attention, but some screens felt downright jam-packed in a way that was a bit unreasonable to navigate.
- Nita's arsenal is simultaneously fun and limiting. The candle is super satisfying, but the flames hurting you contributes even further to a sense of severe claustrophobia.
- The balance on weapon damage feels a bit off sometimes. I certainly see the challenge in trying to make each brother feel equally useful, but despite the possibility for Nita's arsenal to be super busted, he often felt really limited. Especially after Ito gets the bow.
- I do wish there were a third boss. I know it was a contest limitation, but the quest really suffers without it, and especially given that you didn't make the contest anyways, I'd have pushed strongly for including one.
- It'd also be great if collecting HP when your health is full applied it to the brother's health instead.
- Not necessarily a bad thing, but the design of the town (going left to the town meeting, further left for the candle) natural leads you towards L2 and L3, away from L1. As a result, I ended up just exploring most of the overworld before arriving in L1.

Overall it was pretty enjoyable. Would recommend.

I'm going to avoid leaving a rating here. I stopped partway into the second dungeon, I don't think that's far enough to be fair.

I don't hate this. The screens are pretty, the puzzles in L1 were creative. But what I played just felt...rude. As far as I can tell there's one save point at the beginning of each dungeon, one at the end near the boss, and you lose all progress if you die. The enemies are tough, there's a lot of them per screen (also projectiles, and you have no shield) and there's no slashable pots; death always feels like it's around the corner. (Either brother dying is a game over.) That means the safest play is to trek back to the start of the dungeon every time you accomplish something. The dungeons didn't really open up shortcuts or anything. The enemies are kind of bulky and slow to kill.

The dungeons aren't huge or anything, it could definitely be worse. But I just...when I got locked in a kill all enemies room I'd already passed through a couple times with low health two screens away from the save point, I wasn't really feeling it anymore. I feel like this is a quest where I'd have been fine to keep going if F6 were enabled, or if dying didn't disable progress, or even if save points were more generously placed, but as it is I'm not sure I have the patience.

i played it but i'm stuck on the candle puzzle can you make it easier

Looks so good. I haven't played it yet, but I'm giving this my recommendation to anyone who might be curious. I've seen a lot a heart and soul put into this quest!