This is a very fun interpretation for a MetroidVania! Love seeing different moment-to-moment playstyles within this genre's overarching structure. The theming of escaping the test facility still feels very genre-appropriate, as does the escape sequence, haven't seen those as much, love to see it!
The visual style is pleasant to look at and clean. Using this measured design paper as a visual is very clever. It makes the textual instructions feel diegetic, and seems rather efficient at conveying gameplay information. The consistently spaced lines really help anchor your sense of speed, as they're right there next to the car for reference at all times. The enemies do feel a little bit out of place to me among the other assets, but I can see that being an awkward concept to design for in this art style. I'm glad they're there, as the combat just feels right as an extension of your maneuvering and boosting.
The controls are tight, intuitive, make excellent use of modern analogue sticks and mechanics like the ice and wind. The feel of the movement, juice of the skidding and the shake of the engine all make it feel a digital manifestation of going "vroom vroom!" over the furniture with a toy car. I'm not sure if there's anything special to the skidding state, but it's fine just feeling great. While I still don't understand how the ice physics work, and how accelerating backwards makes you go faster, they make up for it by being absolutely hilarious.
I have to commend the overall gameplay tuning as well, in how it felt challenging enough without overly laying on punishment. The upgrades to your stats are nice and chunky, so they feel quite empowering, even if most of my deaths were from ping-ponging between sawblades. With most unlocks, the final boss seemed easy, but I can see skipping the numerical powerups as being a great way to opt into a bigger challenge.
I had some trouble opening the final door, unsure how to access the keys I thought I already had. It seems you only hold one at a time somehow? It feels a bit unnecessary to do more than just hand in the keys you've come into contact with previously. I'm curious what exactly the design intent of them was. In the end I just doubled back to fetch the keys I wasn't holding at the time, which did, I suppose, make me run into another optional powerup.