This was a fun little adventure. The map was big but fairly intuitive, the save points were obvious, power-up usage was clear, and I really liked the light/dark effect you had going on at the bottom level. The vines dangling around after being cut was a nice touch too, and the enemies being burned by light sound effect was surprisingly satisfying.

Some areas where I struggled:

- I won't mention the stickiness of the wall climb cause everyone else already has, but I found the wall jumping itself to also be a bit awkward. It took me awhile to get used to just pressing jump while touching a wall, I'm used to there being directional input as well. It also didn't always feel consistent, especially after getting double jump.

- The murderous falls at the beginning felt kind of punishing. I get why they're there, but I'm told that I'm supposed to descend and the first few holes I try to go down just kill me on landing. Some sort of indication or warning that these are danger holes would have felt better.

- A bit of a nitpick, but having villager dialog remain on the screen even after you've moved away or changed screens was a little annoying. I'd consider either having the dialog box auto-close if you get a certain distance away (and maybe have some sort of indication that there's more that the villager was going to say) or just stop the player from moving while speaking to a villager (and don't place any enemies nearby). This was particularly jarring in the final room where I was trying to talk to a villager while avoiding a slew of bats (I didn't know the light would kill them instantly yet).

But overall it was a short and sweet adventure. Running through the game felt good for the most part and I never got super lost. Enemies were dangerous but not too difficult, and there were a few touches that surprised and delighted (the vines, the light in the darkness). Good job!

Fun entry! Definitely a challenge!

-I enjoyed the camera distance. Entities weren't too small or too big, I think you hit a nice sweet spot.

- the variety of abilities was neat! It's been mentioned, but the wall grab was a bit sensitive to my tastes, though it did help for exploring deep down and making risky drops to explore down in the pit, so I see what your intent was for them and it makes sense

- movement felt tight, jump was really readable, and just traversing areas felt good and was fun to explore. Great work!!!

This is a great start, which I would be excited to see after a little more polish goes in. The level design and abilities are solid, though as others have noted, the climbing gloves make you stick to the wall to easily, and don't really allow upward momentum. I would also love to see some knockback added to the enemies for combat, so that each hit feels more satisfying. The focus on mitigating fallback to be able to continue deeper into the world is a really interesting and exciting concept, but I think you will need to do a slightly more structured tutorial to teach this to the player. I can see the beginnings of a really interesting game here, so I am excited to see how it develops in the future!

interesting game.... and a lot to like about it... as others have said the climbing gloves felt a bit annoying as brushing against anything put you into a really slow slide down which meant where you were trying to jump to a specific spot or get away from those pesky birds, it felt a little "sticky"

Apart from that an interesting game with good mechanics, that could be tweaked a little but form the basis of a nice little metroidvania :)

Pretty nice proof-of-concept Metroidvania. The Metroidvania aspect was executed well with all the exploration and decent level of non-linearity/backtracking involved.

The fall damage is weird, you die if you fall TOO far but you can also kind of negate the fall damage if you jump immediately after hitting the ground? Also agree with what Aria said about climber gloves, I would've liked it if you had to "grab" the wall by holding an arrow key to climb it or something. 

By the way, you can extend the double jump by double-jumping onto a wall to grab it, then wall-jumping, at which point your air-jump is refreshed. Not sure if that's intended.

But honestly I think what you've got right here is perfectly workable. Good work.

Pretty fun overall. The art style is cute and feels consistent. 

Some thoughts:

- I agree with what others have said about the fall damage. Seems strange especially to have 2 instant death pits at the start of the game. 

- The SFX could use some work. I'm guessing these will be overhauled if you continue with this project. 

- I couldn't get the climber gloves to work. I seemed to grab onto every surface even when I didn't want to and it made the platforming clunkier. 

Nice job.  

Here the playlist I heard while while making this game. A month of just hearing the same playlist.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVdPMheWiBxHfIrr58diFVwVhgX7ipo9Y