Why does dying clear all your obtained upgrades? This game is long and slow enough that starting all the way from the beginning when you so much as touch a single spike feels extremely unwarranted, and it would've been extremely easy to just... not do that and have dying just send you back to the start without resetting anything else. I died after getting the double jump and second light upgrades, and I really don't want to go through the entire game again with how slowly the player moves.
My thoughts based on what I was able to play:
- The darkness mechanic is really neat. I was a bit worried about the really thin flashlight beam at first, but having that only be an issue for a short, tense little sequence before giving the player a more practical light worked really really well. It made that initial trek through the caverns feel tense and claustrophobic which made them suddenly feel that much more open after getting better lighting, very clever.
- Again, player movement felt painfully slow. It made most of the game's traversal just feel tedious. I think they should be sped up by like, 50% or so.
- I think this might just be a consequence of the overly slow movement but the music felt comically overdramatic for how the game actually played.
- Having the tutorials pointing you to the tunnel on the right but having the actual critical path at the start be a random chain of moving platforms off to the left felt really troll-y in an incredibly lame way. Felt akin to those bad mario maker levels where they make a hard looking level but have the actual exit reached through a hidden block that lets you skip the whole thing next to the start.
Overall this seems like a solid base with some interesting ideas but had too many issues in the execution for me to really enjoy it in its current state. It does have a few really nice moments, and I could see a game with this darkness mechanic being pretty interesting with a better core controller.