Loved the animation and story line, spent quite a bit of time trying to finish the game as fast as possible and managed to reach bowser.
In my many attempts, there were a number of things I noticed.
- I haven't noticed any affect from collecting black coins
- Many signs aren't readable and many NPCs are hard to talk to/untalkable
- Holding space bar seemed to cause you to float and fall repeatedly as you landed, preventing quick successive jumps
- Simply holding shift increases your jump height from stand still
- Warp pipe to underground with coins is hard to enter and exit some times
- Respawning in the bullet bill flag can some times cause unfortunately times repeated instant deaths, you can crouch to avoid this
- Its possible to get stuck in front of spikes and you'll eventually die when their ball comes out, most obvious with the spike beneath the four bricks next to the lava pit
- You can hold up and jump in the climbing section to "fly". Under certain circumstances, it increases your normal jump height tremendously
- I wasn't able to beat bowser without the super leaf, no amount of jumping and angles seemed to damage bowser
- Bowser's door was hard to enter
- Seceret gallery with bowser arrows didn't seem to be functioning, scenes weren't skipping or rewinding at all.
Bugs aside, my main criticism for the game is that for a game revolving around finishing as fast as possible, there is a lot of punishment for taking the quickest routes. Short cuts are riddled with black coins and taking the short cut warp pipe you can purchase ends up making it harder to purchase the bonus items at the shop. I would suggest the pipe just unlock when you have the right amount of coins instead of using your money.
I had a lot of fun playing, only reason why I noticed these issues in the first place! Looking forward to more in the future.