Thank you for the kind words! Every bit of the weird jump is intentional! ever since I was a child i dreamed of a game where I could just keep jumping and I would go the same direction even when I stopped pressing forward.
the idea with it is that the jumps would be very dependant on committing to a chosen setup, that starts falling apart if you try to slight adjust repeatedly. I like the feeling that emerges in some parts of the platforming of having to fight muscle memory to do certain jumps, like trying to stay still to bounce straight up, or doing a slight tap jump to avoid hitting a ceiling and THEN having to hold to bounce up into a door, I think it's kinda cool. Perhaps it could be toned down a bit on bounces, I wonder if I could... there could be something like it starts just a vertical boost, and with repeated bounces the bounce affects your horizontal velocity more and more.
I see, if the jumping weirdness is intentional and falls in line with your vision for the game that's fine then- once you know about it it's pretty easy to work with.
The bounce changes feel great by the way! Went into my completed save and bounced around on a bunch of the beetles, and it felt a lot more controllable for the first few bounces. Then tried to do my old (stupid) strat for getting into Locked Room Mystery, which involved bouncing on a beetle over the spikes while setting up a charge bounce to get in, and it was still very difficult and precise since I had to bounce in place for a while to line up the shot. Feels like it's worked perfectly.