Really liked the presentation of the game, Ansimuz does some great work. I found the gameplay problematic. Not sure if it is just trying to play the web version with a keyboard, but something as basic as your attack has issues as you can only do so crouching. When you hit an enemy, they just keep on coming so you get hit anyway. The dash seemed to do nothing, not sure if it is unlocked later or not.

Gorgeous visuals and great game feel. Well done!

PROS:

• Environments, parallax, character animations, FX, etc all top notch on the presentation.
• Level design (and second boss fight) really enforced the usage of player skills after they were acquired.
• Cut-scenes were well presented for context to the story.

CRITIQUE:

• The far parallax layer (far off purple clouds) struck me as off. I think it's because it's slowly scrolling, but also adjusting to the player so when moving right the clouds hardly moved, but moving left they were moving faster than the "closer" parallax layer and that felt odd.
• There felt like some control input dead time after taking damage that really hindered recovering from falling onto the spikes in the spider dungeon while attempting to bounce between orbs. I understand the potential need for controller dead time during the i-frames, but might shorten it for the sake of allowing players to get out of the spikes a bit easier.
• Definitely a subjective judgement call on this one, but you might consider handling mana differently. Right now it's easy to just run out during platforming sections and some mana refill stations feel like they were dropped into odd spots to avoid having a player trap themselves. If mana were limited, but recharged itself slowly over time or mana was infinite, but you could only have two ethereal spears out at one time then you could still fulfill most of your use-cases for it right now without needing to squeeze in mana recharge stations. Just a thought.

I enjoyed your game! Like others have said, the spear mechanic to leave the boss fight was difficult, but I didn't give up, and I managed to get out. You did a great job implementing all the environmental and character sprites, the game looks great. I think the level design is nice as well. 

I would say that having a faster melee attack would have been nice - it did feel a little slow. Also, having enemies react more to getting hit may help combat a bit. The fire mages, for example, would keep shooting me, even when I was hitting them with my sword. Having some hitstun for them might make me more willing to charge in and attack instead of hitting once and running away again. 

Overall though, great work! 

I could be missing something, but the wall spear mechanic had me quitting in frustration after getting out of the first bossfight.

The first bossfight was a lot of fun, I especially liked the different animations on it, and I’d like to have seen more of the game.

I may try to come back to it when I’m less tired.

Well done, i like it. Some troubles in parallax, but nothing major. Good game.

No doubt this is a great and challenge Metroidvania game! I enjoy the battle but kind bit too hard for me to defeat second boss. Control is incrediable good and like the design of how mana and health refill to make game more challenge.

Fun and challenging game! I especially appreciate how there is a lot of enemy variety and how the spear power-up can be used for both attacking and for platforming!

If I had to critique anything, then, as someone else mentioned, the game taking you to the main menu after death should maybe just have taken you to the checkpoint itself. Other than that, I also felt the first boss' normal swipe attack came out too fast. It didn't really give you time to react, so I had to basically go in, hit them once, and assume they were going to do that attack, and get out of the way.

But in general, cool game! I also personally didn't have any issue with the controls, but I was also using a controller. For keyboard controls, if you are unsure, you can maybe look at other popular games and see how they do it. I personally took inspiration from Blasphamous' keyboard control scheme.

Have yet to play more games, but its very well realized, currently the most "metroidvania" game for me. 

Though I have to say, I am not a fan of leaps of faith, and combat could be either less required or more snappy. Slow sword mashing and hitting 4 times to kill someone is not that great. But if it would be BA-BA-BA-BAH - much nicer eh? Or just one sweet hit->kill, maybe with some longish anticipation. Probably a take away is that it would be less tacticall, but I still think there's room for improvement.

I have to say, with these graphics I was expecting to see the evil husband at the castle and was a bit bummed that it was it:) when's more?

Half the time, the air dash panels don't work for me. Also the whole not moving while melee atacking on ground thing was a tad irritating. Other than that though, The game was rather well put together.

Very fun game and concept!  The controls felt a little unintuitive to me, but once I got used to them it wasn't much of a problem.

Very nice, saw the development  quite a bit!  - the  Boss is very hard at first!  but you get it quickly , and  I had the problem that the spears disapear to fast. it's very hard to jump out of the boss area.

Both the combat and the platforming needs some time to get used to, but the gameplay is as metriod/castlevania-like as it could possibly be, promoting backtracking and freedom to explore. The intro is also very well made. I also like how the environment changes as you progress.

I can see that coyote time was implemented, which is neat. I would recommend adding jump buffer too so that it's easier to dodge consecutive projectiles. Being forced to use the spear in a safe environment is very helpful, but as many have mentioned, a longer 'lifetime' would be preferable.

I'm not sure what to do when I run out of mana against the second boss and stopped there, so never got to try out the air dash and am probably missing a lot of content, but I can tell that a lot of care was put into the levels and enemy design. Great job on the submission!

Fun game!  I played to the end, and I especially liked the bosses and varied enemies.  It was very challenging and repeat plays allowed me to improve in the various skills in the game, which is great.  The challenges were thoughtfully designed throughout, and for people who like challenging platformers, it was well tuned.  I spent a lot of time playing it so I'm curious to see more!

Some feedback that I hope is helpful: I almost gave up right after the second boss, and I worry that some players may stop there.   The dash mechanic was hard for me to use even after repeat tries, because it wasn't apparent to me how it functioned.  In further development of this game, you might consider a tutorial, or maybe using color as a visual cue : right now, when you get close to the orb, two arrows pop up pointing in opposite directions.  If you were to color in red the arrow that shows the direction the player will go if they push A, I think players would figure it out more quickly.  Once I figured out how to use it, it was a fun and impressive mechanic!

One other little hiccup I had: I initially beat the first boss, saved my game nearby, then traveled over to the right, picking up the elixir that gives you a third blue mana gem, and died at the second boss.  It then respawned me back at the savepoint near the first boss.  I was back to having only two blue gems.  I traveled across toward the second boss, but this time the blue elixir didn't reappear.  I'm not sure the game would have been beatable without that third gem, so I figured it would be helpful to point this out.

Great work, very fun!!

This was awesome ^^ I was looking forward to the castle and would have kept playing.

The 2 main mechanics are really well done,  Is there a reason the spear can't connect when fired too close to a wall? maybe that would make it too easy ^^

Some good challenging platforming and boss fights, nothing ever felt unfair, maybe another checkpoint in the underground though? :)

Beautifully put together, fun terrain to traverse, combat does have a level of difficulty and mastery, although the animation locks does make it a bit of guesswork during the first boss fight. Which is a great introductory battle.

The spear ability is fun and unique, but could maybe be a little bit more generous with how long they stay up.

The air dash ability was interesting, although it was quite difficult to use. I understand some time might be needed to get used to it, but locking on to the right spark and having control of movement while in the air did not make it much easier.

Enemies are diverse & fun to figure out.

Overall a good time!