Cool! I shattered 59 times. As others said, the music selection really makes the whole experience. The controls were fairly good once I got used to them, fit with the lightness of the music.

As I found the game fun enough to stick with I accumulated some criticisms:

• The collision detection for jumping has some odd hitches. I found myself doing extra jumps midair (before the double jump) sometimes, usually when near platforms or a wall. At first I thought this was an intentional wall jump mechanic I didn't understand.
• It was hard to tell how many hits I could take before dying, didn't seem consistent. This made it harder to take advantage of the forgiveness of multiple hits; if I got hit early in a room I'd just die and restart rather than risk dying after getting through most of the room as I might have only one hit left. An indicator would help.
• The jump sound effect seems too long, and the grunt damage sound is weird for a featureless square (it was almost funny, but mostly grating).
• I think the Automaton of Fun couldn't actually hit me unless I ran into it, it'd just stand there swinging its sword without connecting. And maybe half the time I'd dash through it without it taking damage.
• Because the square is featureless I can't see which way it is facing, so I'd sometimes dash in the wrong direction.
• Dark grey platforms are hard to see on a black background. Same with the dark blue used often in enemy bodies, particularly with the spikes on the end of the wide flat enemies which were practically invisible.
• The knockback on ceiling and wall spikes would tend to drive the player back into the spikes, along the wall, though sometimes the subsequent hits didn't seem to do additional damage.
• I kept expecting to have to do more backtracking, fortunately I could check the map and see there weren't any doors I'd missed so I didn't have to redo much needlessly.

Note that I played the browser version, on a keyboard, so some of this may be due to timing bugs exposed in the browser. Sorry that the list is so long, it's easier to spot specific issues than things that worked well, and overall it worked quite well!

Oh I absolutely love the sound design, the minimalistic approach and the clever way you've fit in the shapeshifting theme.

My only problem was that this adorable jumping sound gets quite monotonous when repeated a lot during platforming. Maybe making it a bit quieter could help, not to lose the lovely background jazz along with it. Just a nitpick, honestly. Great job!

Great game. Very minimalistic, but that worked well. The controls and abilities felt very good and satisfying. Also, it was very well designed in terms of layout and difficulty (keeping in mind I generally don't enjoy difficult games).

I don't really have any negative to say about it, except maybe the lag spike we can get when smashing too many enemies to pieces but that's pretty much it.

Fantastic job :)

Good job on this. This game is proof that you don't need fancy graphics or art to have a fun game. The player controller was solid. I never felt like I was cheated out of a tricky landing or got killed by an enemy because my input was buggy. The little extra hop at the apex of your jump was inspired. I'm not sure how you programmed that, I started out in Godot and be interested to see your code. However you did it it was inspired. I'm not sure I've seen that particular implementation before and I loved it! Jazz isn't really my bag but the music fit well and I never turned the sound down. it was an unusual choice but well crafted. Keep up the good work, I'm looking forward to playing your next game. 

1. I guarantee that the massive framerate drops on web are because you're using a physics-based shatter effect, which isn't necessary--you could create shatter sprites that have the same effect, or use a more efficient algorithm.

2. It's hard to tell which direction the cube is facing.

3. Even though you said it's "forgiving," it's really not--there's more than a few puzzles which will auto-kill you if you miss a jump. Examples would be hitting a spike and being launched into a row of spikes, falling into a pit with walls too high, not being able to dash when over spikes--honestly, that last one is a big deal. Not being able to dash when over spikes? Think of all the 'saving throws' that could be made if you could dash when you're about to hit a spike. But no.

That being said, the music was great and the puzzles were, on the whole, pretty good!

This was certainly interesting. The sound effects and music were ... kinda fun. I liked them. 

I also think the dash ability with the wall bounce feels amazing and it would have been great to get to string multiple of those together eventually but it is always limited to only one. 

Also the feeling when you kill a boss is fantastic , so incredibly anime.  You slice through it, wait and then it bursts into a thousand little pieces. Great stuff. 

Two points of criticism I have are that there seems to be something weird going on when you hold down jump and release it at the apex. It makes you do a little mini double jump that I think isn't intended.

The other thing is that the explody bits made the game slow down a lot. No idea why that is though. Maybe just too many physics objects interacting with each other. 

Overall I enjoyed it. Good job.

very solid metroid game,
from the music / Sfx to player movement are so fitting.
5/5 ⭐

This was a good time. Once I got all of the abilities unlocked I felt like I could move through the game very smoothly, very satisfying to cover large distances without touching the ground. Using the charge to bounce off of walls for height was a fun twist on the mechanic too. The music and shatter effects were as pleasant as I expected them to be from your progress videos. :D

Some things that stuck out to me:

- It was nice to have 3 health, but generally if you fell on or got pushed into spikes, you would just bounce around until you died. This could be fairly frustrating, so it might be worth considering making floor spikes and falling spikes different assets with floor spikes being one-hit kill (to be fair, there were a few occasions where I successfully bounce away from some of the spikes, but it was few and far between).

- Room difficulty and pacing felt a bit weird to me, there were several rooms in the beginning of the game with massive difficulty spikes (including the first room which required some near pixel perfect jumps to get over the spikes), whereas later rooms, although more complex in layout, were easier to get through just because of unlocked movement abilities.

- It was very fun to navigate around the map, but sometimes the normal jump felt a bit off. My character would do mini-hops in the air or slide up walls slightly, and so in the early game I wasn't entirely sure if I was solving jumping puzzles in the intended way or exploiting small bugs.

- Bonus Feedback: I dunno if it's just my browser, but destroying multiple objects at once would cause my game to stutter a lot.

Anyway, very cool entry. Glad you got it done!

33 times I shattered!

Good clean fun! Quite responsive controls make it fun to maneuver around and use the skills. I was for a while perplexed, though, by a little tiny lift I would get on top of some jumps that seemed completely random (though always seemed to happen when I needed it) till I figured out—on the last screen–that it comes from the jump's key up. I've never seen that before, was it intentional?

That little key-up lift and the dash-wall-bounce tech were just weird enough that I wondered if they were "bugs" you turned into features. I applaud the creativity either way!

I never realised how much I needed jazz in my metroidvanias until now ;) and really goes with the look of the game!  Love how you have incorporated the theme of shapeshifting to pull the game back to the core of the abstract (and fun) mechanics, and they are implemented so well!

There’s a lot to like about this! It’s got great progression, puzzles, and a few enemies to make it more appealing. The sound track helps to achieve a light hearted mood that fits the humor of the game. And I like the minimalism! Oh, and the sound effects are interesting and also support the light hearted mood too!

As I always try to leave a constructive criticism in an effort to point developers to ever higher achievement, I guess I would say that this game could use a bit more of that mysterious “juice”. Like having the player squash and stretch as they jump, fall and move. That sort of thing. That wouldn’t detract from the minimalism and would add just a little more appeal.

All in all, great job! There are so many great entries and yours is one of them!

We would love for you to play, rate and comment on our game giving us any constructive criticism (or praise) that would spur our team to making better and better games! Thanks!