Ah, I remember briefly seeing someone play this on stream. Finally played it myself, and while I failed miserably to get to the end, I had fun! The lack of checkpoints really hurts the experience, as pointed out by pretty much everyone else, but other than that there's not a whole lot of bad things I can say about this game. One thing I would like to say is, and this is probably just me, but it felt a bit arbitrary that you jump from the floor onto the ceiling, but you can't jump from the ceiling onto the floor. While playing, it felt to me that they should be the same action really, and therefore have the same command. I understand why you can't just jump from both (if you could, it would just be VVVVVV), but what about not being able to jump at all and having springs on the floor as well as the ceiling? Of course, the level and enemies would have to be redesigned, but it might be an idea to consider. Keep in mind I'm not telling you to remake your game or anything of the sort, I think the game works brilliantly, this is just some food for thought. Great job with your entry!

OH MY GOD I GOT TO THE END AND THOUGHT THERE WAS SOMETHING ON THE BOTTOM OF A TUNNEL AND DIED WHILE LISTENING TO THE SECRET THING AFTER THE BUTTON ;~;

NOOOOOOOOOO

Urgh. Yeah, you're right, checkpoints really ARE important. Even though I did it in one go, it isn't that accessible to players. But you've got that figured out already - as you have figured out a LOT of interesting scenarios that makes the idea work! I Actually think you can expand this idea in so many different ways you could actually make a fully-fledged game all around it!

However, I believe that, while the level design is already pretty great at teaching you stuff, it needs some tweaking, specially if you try and make a "flow" curve following your game's skill-to-difficulty ratio, you'll see it isn't exactly a straight line and it swerves violently up and down several parts. Not only that, I think you could do a lot of fun stuff with the fact you can't jump while on the ceiling. Suddenly a spring on the ciling is something you have to be careful, maybe! (and not just part of a challenge that starts on the ground). Also, again, I feel like there could be more situations making use of the fact you float above chasms. But honestly, execution is amazing, and I can see you're a talented and experienced dev having a lot of fun! (I swear I really REALLY wanna try beating the game again to get to the ending again. I want to see it alllll ;~;)

I loved the music and sfx (some of them were made with mouth I guess, hahaha)
The game fits to the theme and is playable (and I'd say hard, hahahaha).
But it is a nice entry! =D
Cheers!

Super fun and with great mechanics. I only wish there were checkpoints! I had trouble with some later parts but I didn't get to spend time practicing on them - every time I died I had to restart. Also, the eyes on the different characters made me laugh :)

Totally worth playing the hard mode and finding the secret, trust me.

Cool game. Fits the theme, definitely a complete playable experience, and enjoyable overall. Some comments on what I would think about (keeping in mind this is a fine game as is):

 - The first enemy where you bounce off is hard to see off screen. This means I didn't really understand at first that you could kill enemies by bouncing off their heads. I appreciated that you were trying to teach the mechanic, but it didn't really work for me; maybe by putting him less far down the screen, you could make him more visible at the start?
 - The screws that the enemies shoot are the same height as your character sprite. This meant I was afraid I would be hit by them even on the ground, and on my first two playthroughs I did a lot of extra jumping because I was afraid of that. Making the character sprite slightly shorter, or the screw shooting animation slightly higher up, would both have fixed this problem.
 - I see you added a version with checkpoints. Ideally, I would have liked to see not just checkpoints but complete levels; e.g. I think that each of the "floors" you have here would make a fine introductory level, building up to longer levels as you go through. This would raise my feeling of accomplishment, and allow me to have a better sense of progression.
 - As you get to later levels, an additional mechanic you could add would be enemies that turn around once you're past them: as is, there is little motivation to kill enemies (rather than just bounce past them), which could change with a more advanced enemy.

I made it to about the 4th "level"; I did not beat the game.

It is a nice game with a simple mechanic but a very pleasant level design. And at the end, between the final boss where it looks like you play a breakout where you control the ball, the very funny narration and the fact that you can backtrack the level with the gravity on, the game truly become excellent ! Very well done !

Pretty neat level design :) It was challenging in a good way.  The concept is simple but well-executed. Good job!

P.S. Saw the secret at the end!

Please try our game too if you have the time!  https://azure2s.itch.io/space-command-1980

Simple and well executed concept. It does get repetitive, and I think that one or two more mechanics wouldn't have hurt to build on the core concept, but the level design is solid and clever enough in enough spots to enjoy. Good job.

i think here where the real work comes in i think it's very good and i just wanted you to reply there first then i will rate and comment here sorry if i get you confused but you started the joke anyways i wasn't joking about seeing my game it will be nice if you rated it and sorry again for this bad joke but i couldn't prevent myself from doing so. 

Cool idea, but needs checkpoints! Had a lot of fun with it.

Very cute game, but VERY frustrating! I agree this game would do well with a check-point system, but even some heart pickups would be nice too.

I liked how you demonstrated how to kill the enemies using the spring in the beginning, I thought that was very clever! I wasn't able to finish it, though. I got to the final boss once but I wasn't able to get to him again after dying another 5 times. It just wasn't in me. :(

I noticed that the screws are JUST high enough above you to not hit you if you're standing still on level ground. So you can evade all enemies just by running past them. This seems like something you did intentionally to give leeway to the difficulty of the rest of the game, which I thank you for 🙏

If you make the difficulty curve a bit nicer or add some pickup/checkpoints I think this could be a fun little game, but right now it's pretty hard to play through. I'll be sending you a link to my playthrough of the game soon (compressing a 2.7GB video file right now)

There has been a lot of  games that used the "shift the gravity, no jumps" theme, but yours is the one that's the best executed. The graphics are serviceable at best, but the aesthetics look pretty good. Parallax scrolling, particle effects, the works. And the gameplay's not bad either, but it's SHOUTING to get a check-point system. Difficulty's just fine though, it's just annoying to restart the level from the beginning.

A game with a very neat concept! I think the difficulty was on the higher side and the lack of a checkpoint system made it a bit frustrating to play through in its entirety. I do definitely think if these issues were ironed out and the difficulty made a bit more forgiving that the execution of this would've been incredibly top notch! Regardless this is a clever use of the theme that I found interesting to play through!

an excellent game. Requires accuracy which can make it hard at times

A bit reminiscent of VVVVVV, but still with a fair share of unique ideas. A few of the more counter-intuitive mechanics can be a bit irritating (especially when you get trapped in a situation when you can do nothing but slowly watch your hearts drain away), but I suppose in context of this game jam that's not necessarily a minus point? The box enemy faces are awesome, too!

Had a lot of fun (and a bit of rage) playing this one through! Managed to get all the way to the end and find the beautiful secret. Nice concept and execution. I liked how you are forced to bounce on the first enemy to show you how to kill them. I think being able to walk through enemies perhaps makes them a little too easy to bypass, but then again I did find the game challenging as a whole. A healthbar on the boss may also be a nice addition to let you know how far through the fight you are. But yeah overall great work!

Neat concept!  As ArcanePanda pointed out, the polish and execution is awesome!

That was fun! You executed on your concept quite well, but there are a few things that I didn't like.

I feel like it was quite punishing to have to replay the entire game if you die at a hard part, especially if you get frustrated and then die on an easy part, and I ran out of patience after a while. I also feel that you needed to be extremely precise with your jumps in order to not hit any spikes, and I'd often run into them by mistake.

Other then that nice job! it was fun, and congrats on your first

Super cool! Specially for a first timer

Loved how it was not only inspired but well executed. Congrats!!