To start this review, I should say that this is an extremely polished game for this jam and I have played through the entire game. That being said, I'm very conflicted about aspects of the final product.
The good:
- Art: Very nice art and animations for the jam. There could be a few things done to make things read a bit better (Specifically the checkpoints), but these are minor and could be fixed easily, and aren't much of an issue once you've gotten through a bit of the game
- Game feel/juice: Of jam games I've played this has to have some of the most game feel aspects I've seen.
- Movement (generally): The inclusion of things like coyote time among some other things make the game feel good to control. There are a few instances where the input must be incredibly precise (specifically the wall jumping chasm with spikes) which felt frustrating to do and fail multiple times simply because of the way the movement controls worked.
The bad:
- Keyboard controls: I know that this was made for a game controller, however simply changing the attack button to something like shift would have made this much easier to play. It just now dawned on me that I could use J with my second hand, however having a system that uses your mouse to aim would have made this much more intuitive to players that don't have game pads.
- Difficulty spikes: To start this off, I want to be clear I don't have an issue with difficulty in games. The problem I see plaguing this game which makes me so conflicted is the sudden difficulty spikes. This is something that could be improved with more playtesting, so I don't blame you for this issue, but it is definitely worth bringing up. 90% of the game is relatively easy and precision isn't necessary, however every once in a while there will come something in your path that is entirely about precision. The worst contender of this is the boss fight. Even once you know *how* to beat the boss and avoid his attacks, it is simply brutal actually doing it since almost every single moment requires medium to very high precision, and you can only make 2 mistakes (and only 1 if you touch the lava). This ended up making the boss fight take as much time as the rest of the game, and when I finally beat it, I didn't feel satisfaction, just relief that I wouldn't have to do it again. The biggest problem with the boss is that none of the rest of the game is very similar at all to it, and suddenly you're thrust into it *and* you have to be incredibly precise in your execution.
This all said, if you're a fan of platforming games like Celeste or Ori I'd definitely recommend playing through the game. My favorite part of the game was the descent from the mountain (this is a part I wished was actually harder). My main suggestion for the boss fight would honestly be to make it mobile and better make it known where the player is supposed to go (The boss fights in Celeste are a great example of this)Even though my gripes with the game probably sound like they overshadow the enjoyment I had, I do think this is in general a very well put together game. 4/5