Overall this was a fun experience. 

Story: Definitely a unique story with some interesting backstory that I was hoping might be fleshed out a bit and left me wanting to know more. 

Gameplay: I think others already mentioned the acceleration was pretty high which made precision difficult. Also the player hurtbox range was pretty small so it was more challenging to fight quick battles forcing me to try to be more careful. Probably just needs a bit of tuning.

Having a lot of jumps was pretty fun. initially I tried timing the jumps to try to get as high as I could but eventually realized I'd get much higher if I just jumped as fast as I could. 

Minor issue with an enemy dying outside the walls so the pickup was inaccessible, but because enemies respawn that's not really a major issue.

I talked to you in discord about the keyboard/controller issue. It was probably an issue on my end, but it wasn't super intuitive that the global option to use Controller didn't seem to override the player's save-game if they started a game with keyboard controls (then saved).  

It would have been helpful if there was a better way to replenish life other than grinding droid/probes.

The ranged attack was really interesting but sometimes it felt like the range-aimer thingy wouldn't disappear fast enough so I could move again. this mainly impacted me on the boss where it seemed to stick on the range-aim mode long enough that I'd get lasered.  wondering if maybe moving could insta-cancel the range-mode.

For the blocks that took multiple hits to break I thought it might be nice to make them change color or texture to indicate how many hits they'd taken (and when they were one hit away, make them look like the one-hit blocks maybe).  kinda minor since in the jam version the blocks weren't a major factor.

Graphics:  I think the overall graphical appearance was pretty consistent. I really liked the background (and the parallax in the far background).  The droid/probes were simple but looked fine. I liked the elevator drone.  

Audio:  I really liked the music and I think it fit pretty well for exploration. the sfx for the player were pretty good and I liked how the boss had its own music.  I agree with comments that it might be good to have some sort of sfx feedback for damaging enemies. I didn't realize I was even damaging the miniboss till I finally noticed the enemy health bar and that it was depleting.  Same for the boss; might have been nice for some audio feedback since you could hit the boss offscreen and only knew you hit it if the health bar went down.

Enjoyment: I enjoyed playing and was glad that I beat it. I felt like I'd accomplished something which is a testament to the challenge feeling fair and interesting. I'd love to play an updated version if you keep working on it for SMVM

It was rare to get so many jumps to being with, but I really liked it. Took awhile to realise it (which got me stuck for awhile) but I only realised that your jump would go higher depending on your speed.
Sadly I couldnt play much of the game as I couldnt seem to shoot with my right mouse click, really not sure why.
Seriously though, seeing the other screenshots and how much was made for this game showed the amount of things crammed into this game which is amazing (even more amazing considering how little time you took to do this), so definitely kudos to that!
Realised that the beginning area was also a bit more of a puzzle platformer than I realised, so the game design was great as well as it was able to merge both a puzzle platformer and combat!
(P.S. thank you for hosting these jams!)

I feel like the gameplay is definitely the most strong player in this game. It's got very interesting jump mechanic.  The fact you can access fancier attack moves the longer you are in air is really cool.  I really liked the save spot feature as well, helps a ton for those of us who are terrible platformers.  I love that there are helpful text (even if some of the keyboard instruction isn't correct) everywhere I acquired a new ability or that I am about to run into danger.  I thought the music was also very nicely done, it was simple but suits the game very well. Feels like I can really use a sound when enemies are getting hit,  as well as maybe a visual hint(maybe they flashes red for a second to show they have taken damage). 

 I notice Anya can move quite a distance horizontally and I for some reason had trouble estimating where she would land sometimes. I am either pleasantly surprise how she was able to make a jump that I thought I for sure have missed or I overshot her and she cleared right past the platform that I thought she was going to be able to land.  But this might have more to do with my poor platforming skill than the game. :p

 Being a graphic person, I do wish Anya's sprite was done with a little more detail. But I understand since the artist was also the coder that it's difficult to  do both job perfect for a complicated game like this in a month. 

Overall I thought the game was very well designed, and really well done for a team of two. :D

I love the "Metroidvania? Okay eventually I'll have to find the double jump upgrade right?" "Nah dude here's 3 friggin bonus jumps good luck bro" 

I had some difficulty being on keyboard, as spacebar to jump on the same hand as D to move right made my platforming a bit difficult. Maybe if the fall speed was slower I would have had it easier, or if movement was arrow keys and attack was Z or X with spacebar being jump.

I had trouble with the miniboss only because I couldn't anticipate its attack. Audio cue or flashing color before zooming at you etc. Otherwise, the camera pan? Killer. I loved it. Showed you were in for a fight. 

Music was awesome. Megaman-esuqe energy through the game I loved it a bunch! Sword could have had a teeny bigger hitbox and the gameplay would have been less dangerous in general since you move quite fast. 

Still, it was rad. The story was cool, the cinematic pieces were dope. Just need some polish on the movement and telegraphs and you're golden.

Hi, I just finished up playing ATS & have a lot of feedback for you. Just a disclaimer, no criticism here indicates that I disliked the game, I just took notes on everything that came to mind as I played the game so you could have as much feedback as possible.

First off, I really liked a lot of things about the game. The parallax effect in the windows is really impressive, I loved that. I also liked the intros to the bosses. Panning toward to mini boss at the start of the fight is always good, it lets you know that you're in a fight now, but also gives you a look around the room so you can figure out what to do right away. The beginning of the final boss fight was even better, I thought it was really cool when everything zipped off to the side like that. The final boss fight had a lot of cool visual stuff going on, but was a totally fair fight, so that was really nice.

In general, the combat and platforming were really good. It's unusal to have so many extra jumps right from the start, but easy to get used to. The controls were intuitive and the written instructions at the beginning made everything even more clear.

I like a lot of the little things, like being able to shoot the missles  that the boss fires. When you go up into a room, you are put onto a safe platform instead of immediately falling back down. It seems obvious but it's something I've seen a few games forget to have, & shows you were thinking about the player experience.

I was really glad to see working save points and a resizable window. It also nice to be able to use my controller without needing joytokey or something to get things the way I wanted. Someone else mentioned the left stick for aiming was awkward, but I didn't have a problem with the shooting. A lot of games make you stop walking to attack & I think it's a reasonable thing to do.

I have to admit, the graphics and music were not on a very high level, but I didn't have a problem with either of them. A couple of the songs were pretty catchy including the one that plays through most of the game. I also liked the tiles that lined the walls, and the effects I mentioned earlier.

Some things I would like to see changed. There were a couple blind falls, and at least one that could drop the player onto an enemy they can't see. It might be good to have long downward sections not be in a straight line so the player can move down them gradually. It also would be good to have a lower "terminal velocity" for the player to have more time to react.

There were a bunch of little things I thought could be improved. None of these are very important and I wouldn't expect them to all be implemented in a game jam release, but they would probably improve the game.

The action button probably isn't necessary. You could have the player hit the attack button in any situation when they are required to hit the action button, and I don't think it would ever cause issues as the game stands now.

The game isn't visually paused during room transitions, so you can see the player move while you can't control them, & it looks really odd. It's especially noticable when you exit a room upward, because the character falls back down as the screen fades out. It doesn't cause any issues but it looks unpolished.

The mini boss doesn't telegraph its attack before it starts moving. Since it moves so fast, it's hard to deal with unless you try to anticipate it ahead of time while it's still not moving. I had a little trouble figuring out how to beat it, but eventually did. That could be helped with some extra feedback, like an audio cue, or maybe if it had something obviously defending it from attacks that breaks when it hits a wall, as opposed to just flashing some lights. It also wasn't obvious to me that those half circle areas refreshed your jump. You could just have some text on the wall the first time you see them like at the beginning. I figured it out pretty quickly, so no big deal.

The moving platforms change direction as soon as you move above/below them on the Y axis, and that makes it so they move away from you when you try to jump on them from below. It never really mattered while I played, but it's something to think about, plus it felt a little like the platform was trolling me. Also, I thought they were enemies when I first saw one. It might have been because it was slowly moving towards me, and I had just seen enemies for the first time, which also slowly move towards you. They also have red lights which are often danger signs.

The normal enemies do a very small amount of damage. It might have been more exciting if they dealt a little more, but it's good to err on the side of less damage, so that's OK. It would be good to heal the character at save points & that would let you make the levels a little more dangerous without being cruel to the player.

The melee attack was very short range & since the walking speed is so fast, it was very hard to move towards something & attack it without bumping into it. It only really mattered to me when I was fighting the mini boss & hadn't yet figured out how to fight it, so it's not a big deal.

A few glitches: First of all, the mini boss got pushed up on to the hero's head a couple times! Since it's not ever supposed to move on the Y axis normally, you might be able to change its physics to cancel any stuff like that from happening. One time I shot a small enemy, and it got "knocked back" toward me. Something to do with shooting it at an angle, I'm sure. Also, you can get an extra high jump by pressing the attack button immediately after the jump button. It looked like it might be caused by the hovering that happens when you attack in air. Is your gravity decreased when you attack in mid air? In any case, you can jump higher than intended by doing that, so it could let players sequence-break the game if there are jumps that are supposed to be too high to reach before getting powerups.

All in all, I found the game very fun & satisfying in a metroidvania way, so nice work! I hope things go well in the future expanding on the game.

This was fun! I enjoyed getting the upgrades and final boss was great! I loved the different attack patterns and it felt satisfying to beat. I also really liked the music.

If I could give one piece of feedback, it would be that the ranged weapon felt odd. I think it was mostly the controller mapping. Since you're using d-pad to move, it wasn't super intuitive to move your left thumb to the stick to aim. I felt like it probably would have been better on the right stick. Even better if it was on the right stick and all you had to do was aim it and then flick the stick back to shoot. However, I did like the slowdown while you were aiming. That was really helpful, especially when shooting the buttons through those narrow passageways.

Overall, great job! I enjoyed playing through it. Oh, also the portrait art and the mid-air attack animations were really cool.