This is kind of a hard game to talk about because it had me genuinely invested and wanting to see more, but the design also put me off at certain points. The story had me intrigued because it quickly went from standard-feeling sci-fi tropes to a fantasy world, and I like that I don't entirely know where the plot's going or what the world is like yet. I even went out of my way to do the vinyl side-quest for the spider girl and kind of got emotionally attached to her story in doing so. My one issue with the story is that the dialogue had a lot of poor grammar, which kind of fits for the main character given her backstory but seems sloppy coming from the other characters. (Plus the swear words felt a little out of place.)
When it comes to the gameplay, I think it's well-tutorialized and has a solid (if somewhat unoriginal) gameplay loop; I do think the controls could be a little tighter (like starting/stopping quicker), but they're fine as is. That said, I think the level design could be better across the board; it's a little hard to clarify with words, but there were a lot of little things that felt kinda messy. The stalactite obstacles could've been introduced better, there were parts with the rotating platform wheels where I wasn't able to progress because they don't reset if you touch spikes, there was a treasure chest I gave up trying to get because it required a near pixel-perfect jump across those rotating platforms (if I'm not able to get it with my base abilities, the game should be more clear about that), and there was another treasure chest that seemed to require tanking hits from the arrow-shooting statues.
If there is any part that I specifically remember giving me trouble, it's the bosses. While I commend the attack variety, they are way, way too hard especially this early in the game. It feels like they take too many hits, and some of the attacks feel like unnecessary and cheap additions, like how the Spider Dad summons more big spiders, or the Chef summons arrow-shooting statues. I gave up as soon as I died to the Spider Queen because the Chef already siphoned me of most of my berries, and the thought of doing it again, along with having to mash through cutscenes (there should either be a way to skip them or have them auto-skip if you're repeating a section) and the fact the last save point was not right before the boss ruined my will to continue. That's a shame, because the game really did have me wanting to play more of it.