Another expected Zahran banger :P I'm struggling to sort through all my thoughts on this game honestly, its incredibly impressive as a jam entry. Were it just a little longer this feels like something I'd be paying for.
I tried to go for 100% completion, but I filled out the entire map without finding health upgrades II and V. I guess maybe I entered their rooms earlier, but couldn't complete them? I didn't have any memory of unfinished rooms though, and didn't want to comb over the whole map for them, so I guess I'm leaving this off at 87%.
I had only a couple nitpicks with the game - the first was that it took me a while to get used to recognizing the tiles that you can't grapple to. I wonder if giving the actual cursor some kind of indicator as to whether you can grapple and not just the grapple point itself might make it a little more obvious when you're pointing at something ungrapplable? That'd also be really helpful once getting the upgrade that lets you grapple things offscreen, as right now it can be a bit hard to tell where to aim for those grapples. It also took me a while to realize that some fish were friendly and could be talked to - since plenty of hostile fish stand still I started assuming pretty much everything would kill me if I touched it, so I missed a lot of fish dialogue on my first pass through the early areas (though I think I saw it all by the end).
I didn't find the map until really late in the game, which lead to a lot of frustrating running in circles. I like the map being optional, but I wonder if a little more could be done to nudge the player in its direction - granted, it seems like there *were* several clues to it that I just, missed, so maybe it's just a bit of a skill issue x) (It also seems like the NPC who grants it was a reference to something, but I couldn't tell what...)
There was only one thing that definitively felt like an issue or bug, which is that one of the rooms in the shallows didn't get flooded after lowering the superstructure. What made it so odd was that the room next to it *did* get flooded, so there was just, an inexplicable vertical wall of water across the room transition which felt really jank. Considering the room in question is on the required path out of the shallows after opening the blast doors, it feels really odd that this wouldn't have been caught before release, but it'd feel even stranger for it to be intended just due to how janky it feels, so I'm not really sure what happened here.
That's enough on the issues though, onto the good stuff: I kind of love how underpowered the player feels for so much of the start. The grapple is such a good solution to the initial slow movement and feels so fluid and fun to use, and having to unlock the HUD as an upgrade is brilliantly devious. That initial underpowered state also does a nice job of selling the "defective" part of the theme, and makes the final moveset feel that much more powerful by comparison. The world design also felt really good and had a lot of really clever ability gates, as well as some really fun and atmospheric execution of the overall "inside a giant robotic structure" theming. The whole game does such an excellent job of perfectly capturing the classic metroidvania ethos with a very non standard controller (and achieving it under such a short time limit too, though that's perhaps a little less surprising coming from the same duo that made Moonlit :P)
Visually the game is absolutely gorgeous - I love the swaying kelp in the Wound area (which, also, is just such a cool name for an area). All the objects are super clear, each of the areas feel nice and distinct, it's all super well polished. Sound design and music are similarly well polished, everything felt like a perfectly natural fit for its context. I also liked the writing quite a bit, though I feel like I'm missing just enough to not really be able to piece together what actually happened to this place (it doesn't seem like anything particularly points to what actually damaged the structure and caused it to sink, though maybe I just missed something?)
Not sure what else to talk about, honestly. All of the weapons feel really nice to use, and it's neat how the upgrades all feel like full variations rather than strict linear upgrades (though I think the second sword level ended up feeling like a downgrade because of it, the delay on its swing makes it less useful as a shield which was the main purpose i used that weapon for)
Really good game, kudos.