After 40-45 minutes I managed to defeat Shiorin and then reach around 900 meters. The game is pretty challenging, especially the max health. I almost never run out of time tho.
I like the concept a lot, would gladly re-play a final_final after-jam version.
The graphics are really good, especially for a jam game, the environment, obstacles, enemies, Kronini and Shiorin.
The power ups were pretty fun, especially the speed up. I felt that Nitro feeling from Need for speed, very deadly for myself, but also very addicting to use. At first I could not find a semi-reliable way to damage the enemies (and thus Shiorin herself), the hitbox was really tight, but in the end I managed to find slide + attack which saved the day.
I assume that after defeating Shiorin there is just "how far can you run" mode.
Improvement suggestions:
- The mentioned hitbox of enemies seemed quite tight, even with slide + attack combo I would sometimes get damaged
- While 3 max health adds a lot of challenge I would consider adding some way to regenerate it. It could be some item that you have to collect X times (like 7 or more) so the player always feels that they can comeback from very low HP. Alternatively you could ditch HP altogether and focus on the reducing the timer. It would technically allow for a playthrough where you hit more obstactles but are very efficient at collecting golden hourglasses but that could be fun in itself.
- Bug: Sometimes player can return from the bullet hell mode with Shiorin reading her next attack which takes place in the running mode. It is extremely hard to dodge, killed me a lot of times
- At first I assumed that I had to reach a specific distance to damage Shiorin. I would either move the distance to some "ending" screen or make it visible after defeating all enemies when we enter free to run mode
- I assume that it was not implemented due to time constraints but I would really like a Restart button after dying, preferably with option to skip the intro with Shiorin.
Overall I enjoyed the experience, it was definitely a challenge but a good one, I kept on trying to defeat Shiorin. I await more bosses to defeat in after-jam version.