I’m writing this review in the hope that my feedback will be useful to you. I first saw your game at a friend’s place (the jam version), and after some time I wanted to play it myself for inspiration. I checked it out and saw a new demo and a Steam page, and I was really happy that you decided to finish the game, so I launched it right away.
To be honest, after playing for a bit I had mixed feelings. I started wondering whether the game was actually less interesting to play than to watch. For comparison, I decided to launch the jam version — and oh my god, it plays and feels much better. I’m not sure what exactly causes this, but for me one thing stood out very clearly: I really enjoyed shooting quickly in the game and constantly pushing those diamond-shaped blocks. In the demo version, however, shooting feels very slow.
I understand that this might be a reworked balance decision, but I genuinely had much more fun playing the jam version. I also noticed that in the demo I often died because of the trail left by the diamond blocks, while in the jam version I barely noticed this as a problem.
Unfortunately, I didn’t finish either version, but in the demo I died around 150 times and honestly got really tired of replaying the levels. Because of the long shot cooldown, I completed almost all levels without firing a single shot, except for the ones where I had to push stones to get a key.
It just felt strange to me because the slingshot seems like a key mechanic of the game, yet in the demo I sometimes completely forgot about it since I didn’t feel any impact from using it. I’ll be happy if I’m wrong, and if in the full release the slingshot gets improved over the course of the game and I can really feel the impact of each shot.
I wish you good luck with your game, and patience in development!