Okay, this one might be my favorite so far. Started out struggling with the tutorial thinking "tf is this BS", but stuck with it, got used to the controls, and eventually S-ranked everything! I'm especially proud of my 63.78 on HELL.
The spinning hammer is a really fun take on the theme, and it makes for a great platforming character. I will say that the input scheme took a lot of getting used to. Space to spin the hammer is a terrible button choice imo; even when I was S-ranking levels, I'd still accidentally press space instead of W out of habit. Once you get the hang of the controls though, speeding through levels in this game feels super satisfying. That dive boost is absolutely genius, and I love that you can also fastfall without spinning the hammer for more precise landing.
I do have one major gripe, that being the excessive wall clinging. Super Hammer Guy sticks to walls like glue, and it makes interacting with them absolute agony. Tiny steps like those at the end of level 1 become a massive pain to deal with, requiring that you back up slightly to make sure you're not touching the wall before jumping. I do really appreciate that the game has wall jumping and wall sliding—they add a lot to the platforming—but I routinely got frustrated by the constant slowdown every time I so much as brushed the side of a tile. My suggested fix would be to only have the player slow down on walls when the player is moving down; when the player is moving up, the player's vertical speed isn't affected.
I can think of a couple of other nitpicks: the lack of coyote time led to my jump input getting lost at times, and the player's deceleration midair is far too slow imo. But aside from those (and WALLS OH MY GOD THE WALLS) moving around feels awesome.
Moving to level design, I thought most of the levels were really good! There are a couple of spots where I wish a tile was shifted a bit so I didn't slam headfirst into it after a dive boost, but those are small sourspots in a sea of great design. My only large complaint is that level 7—HELL—is far too much of a difficulty spike and goes on for far too long. Even after I'd S-ranked the other levels, it still took me over an hour to beat. Most of the individual segments in the level are really good (except that bit with precise jumps on tiny blocks; the poor air deceleration & lack of coyote time were felt strongly there), but the gap between this level and the others is way too large. A quick fix could be to just a bunch of checkpoints, which you should do if you're going to keep the level that long, but I'd also add some additional levels beforehand to lead up to it. Of course, this is a game jam with limited development time, but worth considering for the future. And I want to emphasize that once I did beat HELL the first time (72.08), it was fun to go back and try to set better times (got 65.73 and then 63.78, with it only taking a few minutes to get those runs).
I found visuals to be the most mixed bag here. Super hammer guy himself has a really charming sprite, and the simple, silly, MS Paint–esque artstyle works well in a lot of places. However, the inconsistent pixel size and outline thickness can make the game's appearance feel incohesive. I especially loved the world map though; great job on that one. Audio was also pretty good! The sound effects are on point, and HELL's track especially had me groovin'.
Awesome job with this! Again, definitely my favorite game so far, and a great take on the theme.
