Some things I have for you as a new player, and something that I struggled with on my game too.
Your animations were extremely clean and the tutorial was sooooo much better than mine too, the pauses and everything I cannot imagine the stress you probably had coding every single interaction for it. I hard applaud you on that.
In terms of level design, as someone who has played a lot of video games and speedruns mine as well. I would reccomend increasing the size of the camera, so that the player can see more. for a super fun and fast twitch game like this, The reactions to the set up for the level felt more like I had to know the level first and already have knowledge of the level environment before I could complete it. Giving the player just a little bit more heads up for what to react to would make the game feel like when I failed, its because I did not react in time, not that I didnt know they were there.
Often when I learned a level I found myself pressing buttons to kill monsters much before they were on my screen, which overall makes the experience one of learning by failures rather than a fault of my own skill, which I think is an important distinction for game players.
all of this I learned on the first level, but my thoughts continued in the same direction as I played.
seriously so cool idea. For a game that reminds me of sonic, maybe adding different 'alternative' paths were less functional than creating one synonymous experience that felt good for all players.
