So I have been playing this game on and off since the first web release. Here is my current feedback to the game in its current state. sorry if any of this is against your game design. This is also very in the nitty gritty. I wont though be discussing in depth about bugs, visual issues, and things like that. this is more just from the game play, although those often have a negative effect.
- Movement
Things I dislike:
In this category, the main criticisms I have are the way inputs are registered on the keyboard compared to the controller. From glitches with upwards momentum (platform multi jump to get high upwards velocity), double jumps with double binds and presses on the same frame, dashes Inputting in the wrong direction and more. There's a lot of confusion about the character's evolution in the game with accordance to movement. In Dead cells, your character cant even wall slide until they get wall jump/wall climb. but by letting the character slide on the wall, it leads to this feeling of incomplete or poor overall game design. there is also issues with combat affecting movement. The biggest example is up kicks in air stalling your jumps. I think its a cool part of the game, but when designing your progression blocks you have to keep advanced movement in mind if you want to have a hard stop or soft stop, and designing with that in such.
There is also this issue with the game feeling clunky in the beginning and middle of the game. the Individual ideas of movement mechanics all work together in the end, but piece by piece slowly adding them in it feels clunky and poorly thought out in the current way it's designed. The dash seems overpowered compared to the rest of the kit in the beginning of the game. But, in the end of the game, with all the other op movement it's perfectly fine. If anything, the camera feels not responsive enough as you don't really have enough time to react when you move the speeds top runners of this game can.
There are also issues with the progression of movement in the game. In the beginning it is very horizontal heavy movement with there only being a single dash mid air and a dash on the ground, and the only vertical movement is a single jump and a downwards kick that launches you downwards. It's difficult to climb with such little vertical movement, and most of the early game is horizontal climbing. It feels tedious to do it fast, not fun and responsive.
finally in this section (besides the countless bugs movement bugs) the turn around. this needs to be shortened a bit and feel more responsive. its just barely not perfect. ground dashes are often used to chain into an air dash giving lots of speed, and you are able to chain these. you used to be able to combine this with a ground slide from a jump down kick to gain tons of momentum. Even now you can reach insane speeds with just dashes and jumps. but having to turn around on the ground makes it really frustrating, as if you time it poorly or don't jump you end up dashing in the wrong direction occasionally.
Things I adore:
Genuinely, while there are flaws, I love the freedom of the endgame movement system. you can go anywhere in seconds. literally anywhere. out of bounds, on top of the map, you name it you can get there. Currently, and I would love for more and more additions to this. I think that the small unintentional bugs like platform boosting is fun and leads to tons of fun skips. If anything, there could be more places to do that to add to the interest of speed running in the game.
- Level Design
I think that hidden areas could have a slight texture on the edge or something showing as a different layer. It's difficult to sometimes see the secret when I'm looking for them. They shouldn't be instantly noticeable, but i shouldn't feel the need to spend hours hunting them down.
Platforming. the platforms all feel different from each other. In Mario for example, lots of the jumps are of consistent height for floating platforms. It also always feels crowded in the beginning as you have to compensate for the lower vertical movement so you can't add space while also adding height to your levels. Basically, I don't know how high each jump will be, and it only adds to the off feeling to the game occasionally.
- story
Its a work in progress not much else after that
tl;dr
the movement system needs to be touched up, level design doesn't feel coherent with movement. both are fine for casual players, but as this game is built for speed, it ends up with a disconnect between ideas and execution. the character feels less like an extension of you and more like an extension of the game, and the level design doesn't help.
instead of adding more content, touch it all up please. also lack of story so far is fine (its beta lmao), but don't leave it as it is. it kinda feels like swiss cheese, but you probably guessed that.