cough* Ahem. hem~
Alright so. I'll keep this review short and concise :D
Before Loading The Game
Okay so first off, before even opening the game I'll say that the game page itself is nicely done, it's simple but having at least a background along with good descriptive text for the game is very eye-catching and makes good first impressions. And then even after that, I see that you've also had a custom loading screen logo instead of the Godot default loading screen, which is some nice polish from a quick setting that many games choose to skip or ignore(including me), but I'd say its a very nice change that does add to the level of quality to the game. Though it is rather interesting that the game title mentions "Headphone Cat" despite the headphones not being really mentioned at all throughout the game, but it's a funny unique title so that's fine.
Main Menu
Now for the main menu itself, it's definitely got really good charm and design to it despite being quite simple. the title is nice and clear with good contrasting colors, helps highlight the red IRS and all pretty clearly selling the concept quick. Along with having the IRS text jiggle about giving it a menacing feel not to mention the IRS chasing Gerald Socks at the bottom. The animations of the menu itself are rather nice and smooth, good tweening there, everything from the text and the buttons with hovering feel good and responsive. Though, one immediately noticeable thing is that the Main Menu entirely lacks audio, not even just a background track, the buttons themselves don't have audio either which does reduce the responsiveness feel quite a bit, considering the rest of the game has quite good audio, I'd assume this was perhaps just a lack of time? Anyways, the animations are still really juicy enough so that's not too too bad, i like that the transition fade is also a cutout of Gerald.
Tutorial
So moving on to the tutorial part, overall first impressions to the game are really well done. The artstyle is immediately clearly consistent with good colors and clear boundaries. The subtle white particle effects in the background also add a small sense of polish that adds to the immersion of the game, along with adding even more immersion as seen later on with the time slow effect slowing them down too. The dialogue boxes are also really consistent with the style and have a good readable font, the audio here for the text click-clacking is also well calibrated and soothing to the ears without sounding repetitive, I like that its not ear-piercingly loud but still audible enough to hear in the background. Background music is also really fitting for the game and has a great vibe, I really like that whenever the IRS appears they have a separate music theme and even use a different more menacing text clicking when speaking dialogue. The text animation is also nice and smooth I'll add. Also with the text font sometimes being inconsistent in spacing between letters, I'm not sure whether that is intentional but i personally do love it and think it adds to the charm of the artstyle in the game, it could potentially be a bit harder for certain people to read? don't really know, but for me it wasn't any trouble to read. Skipping ahead as certain parts are separated to other sections of this comment, but the dialogue of the tutorial and way that the mechanics are slowly handled is very intuitive and clear. Especially with the easy to understand colors of the different types of floors and such. Even game journalists could understand this :p. And lastly, the dialogue throughout the game is also pretty funny and well-written enough personally-speaking, doesn't come off as weird or cringe in any way, good comedy.
Movement
Now for the movement, I'll say its incredibly responsive and amazing. Definitely some of the best platformer movement I've seen in jams, super clean and fun to control. The friction on the walking after letting go of keys is nice, doesn't immediately stop but also stops fast enough to not feel slidey. Along with the jumping also being a variable jump, which of course we all love to see compared to a constant jump force. The coyote time on the ledges is also incredibly forgiving and well-tuned to feel good. Not to mention all the subtle effects and animations which add a whole lot of juice to the game, like the squashing and stretching of the jumping and how jumping or spinning will cause the level to react and shake, really good action feedback there, also with the player bopping and leaning away from the walking direction, very very nice. The subtle particles on the floor from impact is also good extra visuals. For the first spinning move, definitely can see where the Celeste inspiration draws from. It's definitely very responsive too and the distance feels very fair to be used regularly, direction controls of it are also nice and easy to understand and use. As for the bullet time spin, this one also feels incredibly well-tuned and easy to control, The arrow indicator is clear to see and the time slow allows for good precise movement while not being too overly op. The visuals of the player sprite changing and the background particles slowing down is also good visual feedback as the level itself doesn't really change much. Audio becoming a slow version is also a nice transition, doesn't feel sudden or jarring. However, one issue I have with the bullet time spin is how in certain few levels, using the time slow will zoom the camera into the player. Though the effect is nice, it does actually become quite annoying since the jump direction depends on the mouse, but by zooming in the screen the mouse position also gets dragged along so it does tend to be harder to pre-plan where your mouse should be to prepare for the next jump. And the consistency of the camera zoom is also quite odd, it seems to only happen in about1-2 stages per level rather than being a consistent use or no-use throughout. But luckily enough its not too big of an issue, annoying, yes, but the stages are still not super difficult because of it.
Level Mechanics
Death Boxes
These are incredibly nice and simple, very well done. They clear red color is super easy to visually identify fast from the background and also the collision with them feels very fair. I also like that dying to them immediately brings you back to the last safe ground spot rather than a full convoluted checkpoint transition. Very convenient as well with the player flying back rather than teleporting back so you can quickly see where you're gonna respawn back at. Audio and particles of it are also nice and juicy
Slime Floor
Cool mechanic overall to have an auto-jump floor. Sounds are nice and overall it feels responsive and easy to predict your movement on it. However the thing is that I feel like they were never really like too useful in the levels, more often than not I ended up just skipping them with the long spin rather than use them. Perhaps this is mostly just because momentum wasn't really a full need in the levels to beat them. I could totally see them being fun to use though if there were stages that utilized them better as a main stage gimmick.
Brown One-Way Platforms
Nice coloring and intuitiveness once again. But unfortunately, I do feel like these were the least used mechanic in the game, they only show up very few times and even then it's mostly just for stage transition zones rather than having any specific gameplay stage tied to them. Though this isn't really too bad cause at the end of the day these are still just pretty simple one-way platforms, there's only so much you can do with them.
Water
I quite like the water, adds some variety to the movement and also was utilized for the quick underwater stage. The controls in water are also still fine and doesn't feel like I'm fighting with the water. The only mild issues i found with it were that by holding up while on the surface it will start spamming the water, especially the splash sound effects will get spammed. And along with that it also still kinda falls into the category of "Stage bonus mechanics" like the Slime Floors rather than actually providing new gameplay methods in stages. Though it did at least get a bit more use compared to the Slime.
Spin Gems
The gems are quite nice and could add nice level design variety. They feel responsive and do prove to be useful in certain stages. The collision for them seems to be mostly accurate to the sprite which is nice, though could prove to be a bit annoying since the sprite itself is quite small and the spinning is a bit harder to control compared to like the precision movement of Celeste. The respawn time does also feel kinda long but only if you were to die after using one as on the next attempt you'll have to wait a bit before being able to try again, the waiting makes sense so it cant be reused during normal gameplay, though I think it wouldve been nice if they were to reset if you were to die.
Levels
For the level design in this game, I'd say it's quite good, no complaints really. They all fully utilize the spinning mechanic well and its clear what the goal is and where you have to go. For the first level, I also like that if you were to simply return to the IRS then you get to be put into Jail. Nice funny inclusion. Dialogue is good, like the tutorial. I also like the Joker reference and the quick 4th wall break addressing the player, cheap but well done. Only thing I noticed was that the Main Menu only had the Tutorial and Level 1 as selectable options, so perhaps the Level 1 in the Main Menu could've just been described as general Levels or the rest of the levels could've been included, not too sure. The ending is also nice enough, may have been a bit quick but it's good enough for a jam game story I suppose.
Pause Menu
Now for the Pause Menu itself it is quite an oddity. First off to access it is kinda not that useful, as by default when Itch is fullscreened, it already looks for the Escape key to close fullscreen, but since the Pause Menu also uses the escape key, you have to Escape once to close Itch's fullscreen, then click back into the window to refocus your mouse, then click Escape again just to pause. So it's not really that useful as a "pause" menu, moreso just a settings menu. Also another thing is that in the controls section it doesn't seem like Z controls actually does anything, it takes away the keybinds for wasd but it doesn't seem to add any new keybinds to move? I guess maybe this was just a forgotten feature or time crunch. Well luckily I prefer wasd anyway but still it's a missing feature so I had to report it here :3
Miscellaneous Bugs
Now for the final part, I get to talk about bugs! Or anything weird that I noticed :)
1. Returning to menu through the Pause Menu while dialogue is going on, will cause the dialogue to persist, and also when that dialogue is meant to be played after re-entering a level, it wont visibly appear, sounds and functionality remain, but it's just not visually there
As you can see, the score and dialogue box remained even in the Main Menu
2. The only one awkward bit of dialogue in the game, I think "is" should be "are" here since it's plural
Would be funny if I'm wrong about this though
3. This floor at around the start of Level 2 seems to be missing its outline? And also is slightly raised off the bottom of the screen
Edge on right side of stage
Edge on left side of next stage
4. Some floor tiles clip through the Death Boxes here
:0
5. Several stages have nice shortcuts through the roof of the map, not sure if this is intentional speedrun pathing or just lack of walls above the screen but they're there and fun :)
Boxes here can be nicely skipped by spinning up onto the floor above the screen and passing through that way
6. If you are on the edge of a camera transition in a stage and you just slowly move off into the next stage, the camera will get left behind while your player is in the next stage, camera will only follow if you come back to the stage and go through normally lol
Conclusion
Overall, very well made game! No massively gamebreaking bugs, very consistent art, intuitive controls, fun story, and fun level design! Quality very good for a jam. would be epic if it was longer since the controls are so fluidly fun and could open up a whole lot of fun gameplay.
Anyways I'm not a speedrunner or anything so 3 Minutes 34 Seconds 142 Milliseconds was the best I could get with only one or two tries :>
TLDR
Had fun!
Game is uh... . . . .. . . .. . . . ok. . I guess. serious. /s
At least 3/5 stars /s /s /s