I love slide canceling!!
This is a neat game, I enjoyed it quite a bit. You managed to pack quite a lot of content into this, with a story, some very nice pixel art, several zones and bosses, which is impressive. While I initially found the character’s movement kind of frustrating due to its low acceleration, learning the slide jumps was actually very fun. That being said, moving her in the air still feels pretty frustrating, especially combined with the very finicky hair grappling.
Overall I’d say my main gripe with this game is a lack of polish, which, for what it’s worth, is very understandable for a gamejam game. For example, the first time I got to the black void area with the piranha plant that ambushes you at the crown (?) symbol, I died and I had assumed that the crown symbol was a fake anglerfish lure kinda deal, so I spent some time at the end looking for the final symbol, only to realize that, oh, no, that was a real symbol, I’d just already collected it. For being the main collectible you need to win the game, they’re collectable without any real fanfare, no particles or distinct sound effect or anything, which would’ve been quite helpful. I had a similar experience with the heart boss, where at first I wasn’t sure if I was even damaging it, due to a lack of hit feedback.
Going fast in this game feels very fun, but I died a few times from sliding into a new room and immediately falling into a hazard on the new screen that was a bit of a bummer. I also sometimes found myself skipping save points because you need to go through the save animation every time. While it is a cool animation, I kind of wish the saves would just automatically trigger when you pass them by, lest I need to interrupt my constant string of slide jumps.
I had quite a few things to critique there, but I don’t mean to make this review sound too negative, because I did really enjoy this game, I just had a lot of tiny things to nitpick, haha. I think your level design is very solid, aside from my little mishap with the black void zone I never really felt lost, which is impressive considering the scale. Really good job overall!