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After a bit of a stiff start, I enjoyed myself a lot with the more unlocked character controls. The animation work outside of clipping into the floor and climbing poles is fantastic. It can be a bit tough to get some moves down, such as slide jumps and grapple swings, as their movement feels quite momentum-based in the mileage you get, but I think this also made them feel quite rewarding to get a handle of. I do feel like the kick is a bit underutilized.

I dig the overall mood choice for the setting. Textures, colors and music all delivered for my tastes, and I'd love to see the sound effects and VFX come together to join them. The presence of these skeleton-looking guys and the giant ones set up some mystery to the setting to dig into, and removing your armor as a means of empowering feeds further into this. 

My personal experience got cut a bit short by failing to find where to go next after the grapple. The map did feel a bit hard to navigate at times, as outside of explicit paths it doesn't indicate where to go much, I feel? Hope that's far enough to make a decent assessment. 

Side note: Found a little bug with the pole climb, that when you climb up past a ceiling platform it ends at, you never leave the pole climb state and can just climb into the sky.

I had a good fun with this one! The character design is cute and their non-wall-jump abilities are a neat take on typical staple mechanics. I think the total resources put in were fairly well distributed, with nothing really standing out as having been left behind entirely. It sets up promise that some more polish could make this game shine in a well-rounded way.

The overall character control is probably the first thing that can benefit from some tweaks, as it is the most prevalent factor with this platforming focus. On controller, it'd be nice to have a shoulder button input as alternative for the basic jump, as a lot of the navigation benefits from having constant camera control. 

Also on controller, the dash's sharp turn radius makes it a bit hard to control, as being slightly off from straight ahead makes you zoom off of the path quite easily. Having the camera snap behind the player while dashing seems like an overall good call!

I think the jump and fall arc could use a bit sharper of a curve at its apex. It can be hard to tell with the floaty jump, especially when platforming up, when you will hit the ground. This is particularly noticeable when going up via falling platforms, as you want to jump pretty immediately. When you get to do that jump is a bit muddy, and your floatier air controls turning into the sharp ground controls at an unexpected moment can send you jumping off-target rather easily. My initial instinct would be to have a set time at the apex where you just float and do not land, after which you get a sharp initial burst in downward speed, to serve as a smaller time window in which the player would land, while preserving the overall arc of the jump.

Dashing into high-jump makes for a very fun joust-and-pole-vault combo, cohesive and uses the character design well! I think it could benefit from having dedicated transition animations, sound effects and all that, and possibly some fancy momentum-redirecting based on how the vault is executed. Working the staff into the wall jump animation would be neat too. Would love to see these abilities polished up, expanded upon and tested in conjunction in some flowy, momentum-preserving platforming sections.

In level design, I noticed there are some slight verticality differences in certain platforms, such as the wooden ones. These really don't need to have collision on these differences, they can be just one rectangle for logical purposes, for smooth play and and performance. The wall jump ability, unlike the other two, seemed to not come with an immediate test challenge to verify the player understood the admittedly informative (and endearing) wall painting. 

A quick win on the audio side would be to add (some variant of) the stepping sounds to when the character lands. That should make it a bit easier to grasp when exactly you regain your ground controls, as well as just feel more correct. Some particle effects alongside that would be a nice reinforcement.

Little performance note: The game would stutter a bit on initially playing in the starting area, both in the web and windows versions.

Good stuff, keep it up!

This is an immensely serene game. It's giving Ender Lilies meets GRIS for me. Lovely, harmonious presentation between the calm, easy on the eyes colors and shapes, the gentle piano score (and combat variation), and the splashy, reflective water. The animation and feedback on the parry in particular are cool and satisfying, and the character and enemies are cute as heck. The map being just outlines is a nice touch too. Presentationally a favourite in terms of interpreting the minimalist theme.

Gameplay-wise the couple of combat arenas I got to felt manageable yet challenging. The slide jumps to get to the parry arena did feel a bit tight, and seemed to demand abusing the coyote time on the jump (a welcome feature). I appreciate that you respawn on the platforms in these sections, rather than falling all the way to a previous room. As someone who doesn't commonly play this type of shooter control scheme, it felt a bit weird to have the slide go towards the aiming direction, not the movement direction. The rooms are also just that bit bigger than the screen that sometimes I'll mess up aim from the camera scrolling (or not) unexpectedly, but that's admittedly a skill issue. I have not run into the single resource mattering that much for offense, as it's such a minimal cost, the rate of fire being low more so pushed me to make my shots count (also technically white health is a separate resource, don't tell).

I'd like to continue, but I couldn't find any spot in the map to continue after getting the slide and parry. There's a tunnel in a wall I can't seem to get to, a room transition that's walled off by glass, and a bouncer that's too good at his job.

Oh! I did not think to try dashing up. That definitely would've taken care of every instance in which I got remotely stuck with it. No problems, then!

It's clear to see that there's quite a lot of work already put into this game, and it a good bunch of features covered. I think it's suffering a bit from going 3D and having such high production value on the character models and VFX. They're amazing to look at, but make the rest of the game feel a bit flat by contrast, and make it feel like the combat should be more extensive than it already is. The most relevant feedback I have for a jam setting is to scope appropriately to end with something mostly cohesive and balanced in terms of all the parts coming together in a way that can be polished (I know I didn't for like 3 times in a row). 

That said, I'm glad to see your submission, because now you're on my radar. Those models, the designs, the style, is sauced all the way up and I am so here for it. Brings to mind Platinum's Mad World in the color selection. I look forward to any future developments! Seeing this taggable characters pulled off as actual MetroidVania powerups would be hella exciting.

Great aesthetic and overall delivery! I can feel the Rain World and Animal Well vibes coming off as I play, with the moody background art and statues and all. Committing to the greyscale palette to let the blue and red stand out was very clever, and quite stylish. The sound design and musical choices matched up well, though for some reason my jump sound effect stopped playing at some point. The mask also just makes the main character look like a geared up explorer.

The movement feels tight and responsive, props for getting the wall jump to feel right. I had a couple fun moments of trying to figure out when and where to toggle the lenses, and it plays pretty nice for dexterity challenges too. It's only now that I notice there were no enemies or combat, so it really held its own off of the platforming, navigating and puzzling alone.

I had a few hiccups between otherwise smooth progression. It took me a really long time to not parse the wall jump section before the red lens as anything other than solid wall. Probably has to do with how the indoor areas feel like they have this darker background, while the outdoor areas only have brighter background. Mixing in the dark background is a bit confusing to look at, even if it's contrasted with the while pillars and the fact that it's already passed through before that section. 

I don't know how challenging the optional stuff should be, but wall jumping off of the blue/red stalactites I could not get down for the life of me (not typically bad at platforming). Seems tunable enough, with just changing the length of them. Cool concept though. Found 3 of the other cuties, fun approach to doing bonus collectibles/secrets within a jam format.

Great to hear you both enjoyed playing, thank you so much! I have to agree that this jam theme has been particularly nice nudging towards controls that allow for one-handed or otherwise relaxed play. While it's unfortunate I ran out of time to make more content, it's nice to hear there's audience for some more.

I didn't expect the art style to become a part of the appeal, but it turns out picking a tight, small color palette can help a lot. It does however indeed hide the grass-colored powerups. I'm not sure if it's also the tiles being a bit busy, but using your feedback should get it to a better spot.

To lift a bit of the curtain, all the "physics" are being handled very explicitly, like traditional platformer controls. There's just the layer of spinning and simple traction going on, to where you can have spin independent of your momentum. You influence the spin, the spin influences movement, but every player state has its own tuning for how fast you spin and how much it transfers to movement.

Thank you! I'm glad you parsed the boulder as such, haha. There is admittedly some stickiness in the current character controller when it comes to walls, not intended but it crept into my late fixes. 

I can see why the momentum for climbing doesn't read too well. It's supposed to come from the amount of spin you build up before hitting the wall, but the animation of the spin and general effect of the wall climb powerup could use some iterations. A similar thing goes for the mushrooms, they let you bounce to retain the height fallen from, but nothing indicates that, and the bounce is too opt-in to run into naturally. Very useful feedback to iterate on! 

It's nice to hear the low% speed run approach landed for you! Even though it was at the expense of the base movement working out better than the upgrades. There was supposed to be a little bit of trade-off to the upgrades, but they should generally be stronger than without. I'm guessing the instant-stopping that the wall climb powerup gives you feels unwieldy?

Ah I see! I can see that playing as a preamble to the escape sequence. I may have missed some form of visible timer on both, because aside from the presentation of the alarm state, there didn't seem to be any urgency. Plays well with the fact that you're driving, but indeed could use some clarity to really shine.

This is a very fun interpretation for a MetroidVania! Love seeing different moment-to-moment playstyles within this genre's overarching structure. The theming of escaping the test facility still feels very genre-appropriate, as does the escape sequence, haven't seen those as much, love to see it!

The visual style is pleasant to look at and clean. Using this measured design paper as a visual is very clever. It makes the textual instructions feel diegetic, and seems rather efficient at conveying gameplay information. The consistently spaced lines really help anchor your sense of speed, as they're right there next to the car for reference at all times. The enemies do feel a little bit out of place to me among the other assets, but I can see that being an awkward concept to design for in this art style. I'm glad they're there, as the combat just feels right as an extension of your maneuvering and boosting.

The controls are tight, intuitive, make excellent use of modern analogue sticks and mechanics like the ice and wind. The feel of the movement, juice of the skidding and the shake of the engine all make it feel a digital manifestation of going "vroom vroom!" over the furniture with a toy car. I'm not sure if there's anything special to the skidding state, but it's fine just feeling great. While I still don't understand how the ice physics work, and how accelerating backwards makes you go faster, they make up for it by being absolutely hilarious. 

I have to commend the overall gameplay tuning as well, in how it felt challenging enough without overly laying on punishment. The upgrades to your stats are nice and chunky, so they feel quite empowering, even if most of my deaths were from ping-ponging between sawblades. With most unlocks, the final boss seemed easy, but I can see skipping the numerical powerups as being a great way to opt into a bigger challenge.

I had some trouble opening the final door, unsure how to access the keys I thought I already had. It seems you only hold one at a time somehow? It feels a bit unnecessary to do more than just hand in the keys you've come into contact with previously. I'm curious what exactly the design intent of them was. In the end I just doubled back to fetch the keys I wasn't holding at the time, which did, I suppose, make me run into another optional powerup.

I like the tone and overall aesthetic set by the art and music. The per-level timer is an interesting take, and could very well play into a unique pressure to the environment, such as the ghost coming to chase you in Spelunky, or Pizzaface from Pizza tower, Metroid Dread's Emmi's etc. Given some more time in the oven to build a castle and dungeons with these tools, I can see it hitting a nice MetroidVania feeling of "the world is a character in itself." 

Gameplay highlights for me include how the triangle in particular uses its shape to kind of "grab" onto platforms to get a bit of an edge, it just feels right. I'm not sure if it was intended after getting the pentagon, but jumping over the tiny, cramped spike pit above it with triangle's grabby double jump was a nifty little moment after getting denied by going through that as a square and lacking the jump height to proceed. The way you can only swap shapes at these shape swap spots made it quite fun to figure out what shape I was going to need to get past the next obstacle and actually to the next gate. This process could expand out to quite some intricate puzzle platforming when explored further with all the shapes in your tool belt.

I appreciate the visual aesthetic you squeezed out of these basic shapes, by giving them these nice gradients, presenting the shape swaps like a little confetti pop of sorts, and how they have a nice spin when jumping. The darkness in one of the area adds a pretty strong sense of being in the endgame, and the music is a bop all over. The fact that the music itself is also basic shapes is very clever!

Regarding technical hiccups, I'm not sure if I'm missing something, but it seems that dying as a square in the triangle area gets me stuck. I couldn't you can't reach any of the shape change gates as a square from the starting spawn point, it just doesn't jump high enough to get to the first shape swap spot. Might just be how the patched version handles the respawns though. Treating the shape swappers as checkpoints would probably be helpful here, given that there's more traversal and problem solving than there is combat anyway?

Love the aesthetic, the dark tones and low drones contrast nicely with the brights! I'm also a sucker for the main character design and the design of the central room. 

The squash-like bouncy ball combo mechanic is fun to play around with, I feel like it could've very well carried a game on its own. The literal last button presses in the game seem like a fun angle to explore further, in a Portal-esque sense, for puzzles or challenges of "how do I get my ball in this mode from this position?" Speed could work into that as well. Though in those cases, I'd suggest reducing the need to time the parry, as relative positioning would play more into it. Either way, fun playing around with the two main moving parts!

While I can see that tying abilities to whether or not your ball is in a given mode can add to an interesting juggling act, I don't feel like the game quite got to the point of exploring that under pressure. In most cases, it feels like a matter of toggling through to just get to the thing you need. A little bit of extra minimalism could be squeezed out by using the same button for each "ball-mode-ability", since only one is equipped at a time anyway, maybe?

I appreciate the use of the full screen as the map. (All the more when not accidentally clicking outside of it, oops!) Utilizing modern day massive screens like this makes for a nice breaking of how we engage with the hardware itself, and had me looking at different parts of the screen as though I was scrolling through the map using my eyes rather than the controller. Leaning into this some more and leaving behind the tab-to-zoom, to fully commit to the bit might uncover some more fun design space. Bonus points for making looking at the (mini) map into a fun spin, rather than a reluctant concession.

All in all, there's a lot of fun ideas here with strong potential of their own! I think the game could benefit from picking one and focusing more on it for a while longer, to explore how we can play with it. This many abilities in within the scope of a jam, while impressive, can feel a bit like you're either rummaging through your stuffed tool bag at each obstacle, or playing Simon-Says with the environmental cues.

Thank you! I agree it'd feel better to make movement a bit faster, once the controls are tight and clear enough to accommodate it. Right now the wall climbing indeed is a tad finnicky, as it demands mastering of the spinning and traction physics, which aren't quite tuned satisfactorily.

I'm eager to play around POLYGON soon and see your takes! 

Thank you for the feedback! There is indeed more polish needed to get the controls working cleanly. I'm glad you could catch onto the rotation/momentum management and its potential. I hope to explore it further in the future, and bring some of the stuff from the drawing board out better.