finally came back to this one. it was one of the first ones i started playing, and it was kicking my ass, so i moved on to other things. i guess playing a lot of the contest entries has upped my skills because it was a breeze when i returned. maybe i should replay the beginning levels, but i'm thinking that the last few levels (7,8,9) were a lot easier than the initial levels. i enjoyed the level design of the later levels a lot more than the initial ones - but overall i found the levels to be very linear. would have liked to see more new enemies in the early levels, you have to wait to end game to see many of them. the biggest takeaway that i'd like to see other quests doing is the minibosses that return - a lot of the contest quests are too easy to just kill the minibosses, go refill potions, and come back and dance through the rest of the level, not yours.

i think a lot of the competitors used the enemy editor a lot more creatively, and their enemies stood out more. your 8-way wizzrobe was a good addition, as were the boomerang resistant enemies. sword throwing darknuts needed to be turned up a notch, others have did them better. but thank god your lvl2 likelikes aren't beasts like some of the others - i wasn't even close to heart attack territory.

obviously, you lost a lot of authenticity points with all the new ideas - slash trees, bomb blocks, armos&trees in dungeons, etc. but the new ideas were fun to play (well, maybe not the slash bush, that was a little esoteric).

difficulty wise, you fall somewhere in the middle, by no means the easier or hardest, but definitely on the harder end of the scale. as mentioned difficulty balance was a bit off, bump up the later levels a bit and you'd be right on the mark.

is your demo version available to public? i wouldn't mind running through it again, and wouldn't mind more flexible rules.