The presentation here is pretty charming and I (mostly) enjoyed myself. There is a stage near the mid-game that had a room I found unusually difficult to time and execute, and it was right after a rooms that was interesting the first one or two times but sort of became a bit of busy-work timing after that. I did not go for 100% collection, but if I were more in the retro direction I could see getting into that.
I still had quite a good time, a 4/5 good time too be clear, but:
- Crumbling platforms in my intuition are only supposed to crumble after you stood on them. These ones crumbled when being passed through, making at least one screen involving those platforms more difficult than you may have intended.
- The hitboxes for the cat and the projectiles in particular seemed smaller than the visuals would have one expect. To be clear, I think the hitboxes themselves were fine, but I wish the sprites had matched them a bit better.
- The timing of various platforms and movements required sometimes felt more random or even punishing. (I realize it's hard to get moving platforms right, especially when people have multiple opinions about these sorts of things and mine is probably on the picky side.) I will say at risk of contradicting this in a small way, that I liked the platform and projectile timing being consistent upon room re-entry every time.
The presentation is incredibly charming and the world is pretty well-designed. It doesn't do much as far as new mobility abilities, but it makes you learn the ones you start with pretty well. Good show overall, likely to be on the more difficult end, but there's plenty of folks like me who don't mind such things in themselves. With some post-jam improvements on design, I would probably pay actual money for this.