Cool game. Character art is nice. I would like to see mechanics related to the theme in more focus. This seems to be a pretty standard platformer. Just going down in general does not add to the gameplay at all. Well done. For a jam platformer, this is very good and competent.

A solid mechanics based game. New items kept changing the gameplay in a brisk and fun pace.

After a while though, the controls started to cramp up my left hand. This is a rather minor grievance though, because customizable keyboard bindings or gamepad support would completely remove this issue if you carry on developing this game.

Nice game with good mechanics.

Nice concept. Would like to see more wxploration of the theme. It would also help if the game had some music. Other than that it's a decent entry, well done.

Nice game with lots of content for a jam game. It's a basic platformer at heart but the puzzle design is nicely done. However even on easy mode it is pretty unforgiving -- I think the hitbox on the character should be slightly smaller to reduce the potential frustration to your users. Having the player reset back to a nearby checkpoint of the map was a very smart move though. On my first try I made it down to the (spoiler alert) double jump area before I lost all my HP.

Nice game, it was fun to unlock new mechanics! I got stuck in death loops a few time (by holding the arrow a bit too long), a little delay wouldn't hurt. Good job anyway!

- Pretty long, I played until a little after when I got the lantern.

- I like the rope, I haven't seen a mechanic like that before. I didn’t know what button the rope was on (so I pressed escaped to check which also reset the game...).

- I wish there could be more types of hazards other than spikes.

- Good with a lot of checkpoints.

I love platformers and I really liked your game :)
My reviews are usually centered around the things I believe could improve your game:

The double jump "tutorial" was too brutal in my opinion. Took me a while to do that.
I always first try a controller (xbox) because I don't usually like wasd controls.
Would have been nice if you supported controllers. I would have probably ran through
5x as fast as I did with a controller :P

The hitboxes around the spikes seem to be a bit unfair in my opinion. I understand that you want to make them as big as the sprite. But often it is a good idea to make them a bit smaller.
The player should feel like it's their mistake when they hit them.

I like the character art, especially how they climb walls. Very well done, I got stuck on a section where you need to dash back and forth well avoiding the spikes, the precision need to transverse this section was just too great for me. Overall it's a really cool game, with fun progression.

Solid little metroidvania, I love the inclusion of not only difficulty levels, but also more granular difficulty customization

I liked this game!

The controls were very tight, although maybe a little TOO tight, so as to feel sharp. A TINY bit of acceleration might be worth experimenting, here is a good article describing the approach I think feels the very best: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MarkVenturelli/20140821/223866/Game_Feel_Tips_II_Speed_Gravity_Friction.php

But these controls are good. Much better to be too tight than too loose! I appreciated the expressive jump that cared how long I held the button, and also the generous air control. The dash felt really good, too, and you did a great job with the interaction of dashing, jumping, and falling. It fit together nicely. Wall climbing felt slightly jarring at first but I adjusted pretty quickly, and I'd say it was well implemented.

On top of this nice control scheme, you built appropriate challenges that tested my skills. This drew me in.

It was a shame the game trolled me so hard. Sending me all the way back to the very start and stripping my abilities made me howl with rage, and after it happened twice I decided I was done. Instead of playing fair, I did this to your game: https://imgur.com/MalqFxD

If you didn't brutalize me with having to repeat the game over and over, I would have probably played the whole thing. It's a nice touch that you offered the ability to customize difficulty, but by the time I knew I needed them it was too late, so they didn't save me.

Ragequitting at restart aside, I enjoyed the game a lot. Star was the high-quality controls with variety of mechanics. Graphics, although simple, were crisp and functional. Sound was also functional, and the music was a nice bonus. The whole progression thing and the bonus timepieces was a nice feature set that took the game up a notch, and showed you really got a lot done.

Overall nice work, although I would have happily spent more time with the game if it wasn't so punishing.

I didn't know what to expect starting this game, but I was pleasantly surprised by the tight platforming and variety of mechanics! I was really getting into a groove when I hit the life limit which is a shame, I feel like the game would be a lot better without it. I also feel like the placement of the buttons could use a rethink (climbing up with space and left shift for dash in particular). Overall though I love the platforming, I hope you expand on it more and make more of these crazy levels!

This game was pretty cool. Lots of upgrades and interesting platforming challenges. There were a few times that my jump key stopped working for some reason. There was one time that I got to the double jump upgrade but missed the hook upgrade, which felt bad. In general it feels awkward to have a limited amount of lives in such a hard game. Maybe limit the amount of lives for normal difficulty and above? As far as level design - it was easy to get lost and feel unsure which way is the way forward. Otherwise the art was very readable and I understand everything immediately. This platformer seems like it would a lot of fun to dive into if I only didn't have the few bugs that got in my way. Thank you for the game.

This is a decent platformer! I wasn't able to complete the game, but I was impressed with the amount of levels and content this game had. Liked each powerup- each were fun additions to the character moveset. I was able to get the double jump before I ran out of lives. It was a little tough for me to maneuver with keyboard, but I found each little platforming area satisfying to do. Little bit of extra movement acceleration when beginning to move the character after pressing a key so that they don't go into full speed immediately might help here- it'd help the cases where I was trying very carefully to feather the movement so I don't walk into spikes. The levels where you'd have to traverse down wide vertical corridors that had rows of spikes that you had to dash over to fall further through were the hardest for me, maybe because the gravity was too fast for me to react to things coming from beneath the screen. Nice work on this!

Very good! Keep creating games!

There's some neat level design in here, and lots of content! Impressive how you made so many different (and challenging!) puzzles using so few different kind of blocks.

Had some issues figuring out how to use the items I got. Text rendering didn't work for me, so I might have lost out on some good hints, though.

Nice job, this game is definitely more than meets the eye!

Pretty solid metroidvania, I am not sure it was useful to implement life, the game could have just been a series of challenges without pressure with a countdown. It is very nice to have implemented custom difficulty! I just wish I could play with a gamepad, it would more confortable.
Overall well done :)

This game seems pretty fun, but I am not a fan of the lives system you have. I kept getting sent back to the beginning randomly and it took me a second to figure out why. In my opinion, this game is a bit too difficult to have a lives system. Also, the first time I lost all my lives, I died while climbing and there was a bug where I was still climbing after respawning... it was a bit strange to be able to float everywhere in the climbing animation lol.

I'm very impressed by the sheer amount of content and thoughtful level design here. Each time I picked up a new item it was fun to experiment with it, and the areas immediately before and after each unlock lead really well between sections. I did eventually (as is tradition with Metroidvania games) get completely turned around. A map would have been really useful, though of course I understand the difficulty of implementing that in a time crunch.

I wavered quite a bit at the start between "normal mode" and "easy mode" and finally decided that I would rather experience everything this game had to offer rather than be beaten down by difficulty if it was too hard, but ironically I found "easy mode" to be quite a challenge on its own. The healing runes are few and far between, and I struggled a lot with the control scheme (especially the confusion of having "move up" and "jump" be the same button - I kept trying to use "W" to move up in a pinch, but maybe you were avoiding it to better support AZERTY layouts?

Overall, this is a nice entry that really jumps past its first impressions.

Very cursed! :skull:

I had fun playing. The start menu options a little overwhelming when starting for the first time. I had an issue where sometimes the player wouldn't jump. If I died again, when the character re-spawned I could jump again though.

This has certainly been an interesting experience. Controls nicely and the artwork and music are fitting together. Unlocking different abilities to get through previously inaccessible tunnels was nice. Respawning felt fair almost all the time, there were only one or two instances where I got reset way further back than I anticipated. The sheer size of the map is impressive, it's also one of my complaints though. Most of it feels empty and you don't do a lot. Also there is no real indication about where to go next. This might be on me though, I tend to get lost in basically every metroidvania I play :smile:

I didn't encounter too many glitches, just minor stuff like the jumping sound getting spammed when you hold space in a one block high tunnel. The one thing I actually disliked was the main menu, it's just a pure information overload. Maybe have main menu buttons for Play and Play Custom, leading to either a difficulty select or the parameter setup for custom games.

The character felt a bit out of place, and certain tight spaces presented an especially challenging obstacle. Overall, however, this was quite well executed. The mounting anxiety of the combined timer and life counter mechanic really got to me!

Quite a challenging game, i enjoyed how the controls felt i think i found a glitch of sorts, i wanted to dash and somehow the sprite was facing right but my das went left at superspeed into some spikes, but other than that it was quite fun.

Opening Menu baffled me for a moment, my first thought was that it was meant to be like a Mega Man level select screen, but the level called "Rules and control" didn't sound very fun...

Seriously though, real criticism. The graphics are really rough and the music is too repetitive. As well, it's tough to tell where hitting the spikes will actually count, I feel like I always have to be overly careful about them. The controls are a bit odd, they seem to be scrambled pretty higgeldy piggeldy around the keyboard, and I keep forgetting that 'W' doesn't do anything, especially while climbing. The overall effect is that I feel too perpetually confused to really get into the flow of things.

The actual mechanics are great, you built an excellent metroidvania structure and you filled it with all kinds of really interesting, challenging, and fun movement puzzles that take full advantage of the movement mechanics that are introduced. As well, your movement puzzles do a great job of gradually introducing the depth in the system that comes from combining all of these simple little mechanics. It's all really pretty elegant, and I can tell you had fun designing them. The only thing I don't like about the movement is the jerky response to input, but honestly the levels are designed around that well enough that I don't mind.

Looking at your profile I noticed, that this is your first game (maybe your first game jam?)
If that is true, than let me first say - congrats, you did it! You submitted your first game, be proud of yourself!

Looking back at it, my first game also was a cute platform, and compared to yours, mine had horrible issues when it came to the player controller. Sure, there are things where you can improve (as we can all do), but you will get there with practice! Keep at it and looking forward to playing your next game!

The mechanics are pretty solid. Every item I picked up really made me feel powerful. The wall climbing, the void dashing, the hooks. I hit a really bad glitch a few on my third play through where I found myself unable to jump after holding space in a one-tile gap, which kind of kept killing my run.

I think I kept pressing "W" to jump, or wished I could've used arrow keys for something like this, but once we had the Pickaxe/Hook on the right side, it made more sense why you used WASD - but it really started to hurt my hand to constantly be spamming SPACE A D SHIFT to jump around corners and such.

A bit of fluidity in the motion would go a long way, but it was overall really fun!

I too hit the bug where the dash would fly me backwards to the nearest "checkpoint".

Once I got the HOOK grabber, I couldn't remember the hotkey for it, so I pressed escape to check it out, only to find that I lost all my progress :(

Either way, I played through it a number of times, it was really fun.