The concept is amazing, having buddies in a formation is honestly perfect. The art is also really good with the sprites and you essentially nailed it
it feels like a game that struggles not due to presentation or theme but due to a struggle in polish.
for example i was very confused on what each buddy did even after reading the description, i think ui could better help with it. such as a circle in the top left that tells the ability currently being used. my biggest recommendation is more ui. UI is the biggest friend to the player.
on it being hard to figure out what to do you maybe could add a built in tutorial if you wished to expand this.
animations could've been good, it felt a bit stiff.
the jumps were very hard early on, maybe because i was confused on the correct buddy though.
rlly could've used music or sound effects, in my opinion music and sound effects help any sort of puzzle platformer shine a lot more.
the characters moved very fast