Hi DyeDuo,
I enjoyed playing the prototype and the platforming reminded me a lot of Celeste, which I remember you mentioning was a major inspiration for your game. Like Celeste, the platforming needed to be precise at times but I never felt like it was the games fault for me messing up. This is something I like when it comes to game difficulty, where mistakes and failures feels like my own fault and not the games, and makes me feel like I'm improving. This is something I think Celeste pulls off well and your game captures this feeling fantastically. I like how simple but charming the pixel art style is, and the concept art fits with your narrative. I can continue seeing the Celeste inspiration.
There were areas I felt the platforming was a bit infuriating, mostly involving two areas of the prototype. Starting with the white barriers, how are you supposed to break them exactly? I'm asking because when I got to the segment where break through three of them (0:25 of the walkthrough), I broke through the first and then got stuck on the second, and I had to mess around with the wall jumping to break through it. The other area I had trouble with was the last platforming segment, as the rocket jump would either propel me right into one of the red x zones, or have run right into one the moment I respawned. This part became infuriating, but was somehow still fun and felt so satisfying to beat. I like Cow Cutter's idea of having an arrow pointing to where the cursor is, as I think this will help aim the rocket jump. It did take me a while to figure out the controls, and walkthrough on your game page helped, but I think you should probably include something in-game to explain the game's controls.
I like the updates you made to the story and the use of themes. I like the additional of the AI not only creating a facade to mask all the natural disasters it's causing, but also creating and fabricating natural disasters or its own. The threat of the AI committing mass genocide as a means of population control is a great way to up the stakes and have bit of urgency. I think a good example of showing the effects the brain chip is having on others through the actions of those you come across. For example, to show how the AI is masking a food shortage or famine, you might see people eating garbage because the brain chip is making them believe their eating normal food, or maybe talking to corpses which the chip is making them see as normal people. Sort of like how a Downer sees a Joy Addict act in the game We Happy Few. I can see a lot of potential with a story like this, and can't wait to see what comes next.