I ended up with a 13 minute escape - like others have said, I was frustrated during the first couple of minutes, when it felt like I was just farming "jump". But that was before I realized I should be stacking shells as new "platforms" - once I had that realization, this became a whole new game, and I was far more impressed with the concept.
This is such an impressive project on several fronts:
- This feels like a real, full production game. The movement is crisp, the level design is well thought-out, and the three abilities are great additions. The double-jump especially felt great to me
- The ability to figure out how to beat the game by playing and losing is a great touch - it hit the theme very well, but I think it works well as a learning mechanic in its own right, regardless of theme. I also enjoyed getting a little bit of power creep, where I was barely hopping at first, and by the end had some huge double jumps across obstacles.
- The music is a great fit for the game. The voiceover is a little weird for me, but I very much appreciate the sentiment behind it - that's probably something that could be excellent if this was a longer-term project.
- The art is wonderful - I love whatever effect is going on with the screen itself, I think the turtle animation into being a shell works well, and each biome is distinct and very clear in what is happening.
I think the biggest area for future improvement would be scaling of abilities - I spent more time in level 1 than in level 2 and 3 combined. Specifically I got level 2 in one go, which again is partially because I didn't understand the mechanics early enough, but level 3 did take me 8-10 loops, so I would venture to say it is better balanced. At the same time, there's only so much you can do, since players are going to scale differently.
This feels like a great candidate to be made into a larger-scale project. Add a fun story in there, and I could easily see this being a $10-$15 game that has a decent audience! Congrats to y'all on a wonderful game!