I thought this was a very charming and fun game! I kept thinking of this as “Super Mario with a sword”. The player controls felt right, the levels were laid out in a very clear manner, and the art and sounds were great (I especially enjoyed the sword swipe and it’s sound effect… can’t really explain why, but I loved swinging that sword!)
A few things nagged at me, though.
Before getting to the levels, the game menus and level select maps all use the mouse. That’s not an issue, per say, but given the main chunk of the game doesn’t use the mouse, having to switch back to it for menu navigation is a bit jarring. I feel the menus and the level select maps should have had keyboard controls like the levels do.
As much as I love that sword swipe, I think the hitbox for it should be a hair bigger… especially in the downward direction. The little spider(?) enemies in the first world are almost all on these very short ledges and, while I may be swinging my little heart out while jumping over to those ledges, more often than not those spider things ding me and I loose a heart. I felt that if I could just attack downward they wouldn’t be as big of an issue. I totally am fine with challenge, and I’ll be the first to suggest that I just suck at playing games, but, given the tight resolution, I don’t always get to see the entire ledge these things are on, so I don’t always get a good sense of the best time to jump, so, my only chance would be to kill them before I land.
Beyond those, honestly very minor issues from my perspective, this was a wonderful game! Loved the Bee boss too!!