Great call to make this in Pico-8. It forces you to keep scope small so you have a higher chance of delivering a quality product.

Your level design is some of the best I've seen in this jam (I do not say this lightly as I've played roughly half the Mac-compatible games submitted so far; plus, I'm a perpetual student of level design and it's an easy thing to get wrong). Yours is laid out in a clean, well-composed way and I can see you put thought into your choices. You're difficulty curve is measured and intentional. You introduce challenges one at a time, giving the player time to understand how they work before mixing things up. You're using the Pico-8 frame-size limitations to tease exploration. Your lock-and-key progression is solid, often introducing the lock before I get the solution. Good choice to use narrative as a reward for exploration between power ups; this frees you from having to introduce more complexity through other kinds of gamist pickups. Nice mix of verticality keeping the level shapes fresh. Solid level metrics keep the space from ever feeling cramped and jumps feel good. Using houses and other unique sprites aid in mental mapping to keep players from getting lost. You've got this large enough to allow for exploration, but small enough that when combined with the previous point keep it navigable without constantly referring to the map (until mid-game). The biggest downfall is navigation during the mid-game. After the map really opens up in the second area, I did get stuck and was unsure how to progress. When you have this many tiny rooms and a map that doesn't give detail, it's difficult to remember where potential leads are for progressing.

Transitioning upwards with the wall jump is hard because you'll instantly teleport up out of the level, then fall right back down with no time to react. It's disorienting. Take a look at how Celeste tackles this problem. Platform edges immediately after transitioning into a new screen are also harsh; you can possibly solve this by disabling input for a brief moment after transition to give the player's brain enough time to process.

I sincerely hope you're proud of of your work. There's good stuff here.

Here's the recording of my playtime and feedback.

One of the best pico-8 games I've played out there. Its kind of hard to compete when using such a limited software, but this is a pretty good game, even if you don't take the software into consideration! Is getting the crown the end of the game or am I missing something?

great game, loved the simple art and music, all upgrades felt great. though I didnt use the teleport much. had a lot of fun with the wall jump! also really liked your spin on the map, using just colored blocks and being able to track where you are was really nice!

two notes - 

1. Sometimes the transitions between 'scenes' is too quick. I would jump see the next scenes, and wouldnt have time to see what is on the other side, or would get killed by spikes because my momentum would carry me into the scene before I could react. Idk if there is a way to fix that but it was something I ran into a few times. 

2. would love to have some checkpoints or saves or something so the spawn isnt the exact same place each time. 

Hello,

This is a really charming game. I liked its simplicity, the level design, the music, the art direction. I got to get used to the Wall Jump. I got to acquire the Crown; how do I pass through those waterfalls?

Nice entry, congratulations!

Cheers

PS: don't hesitate to try our game :)

Cute little mushroom game :D

It was a bit hard to find my way around the first time and the using keyboards the controls didn't feel that intuitive, but otherwise than that its really polished and fun,

Very relaxing and pleasant game. Liked the plot and nice music at background. The character is adorable. Good job!

Cool concept, got stuck after the first power-up (not too much time to learn hitbox and mechanics), looking to test it better after the time finish.

Love the art and it's implementation, one issue can be the font used for the various text that are little bit complicated to understand on the first read