Thanks a lot for the feedback. I did worry about relying too heavily on the coyote jump puzzles to make up for the ease of enemies and generous hit- and hurt-boxes. The screen transition is actually my biggest personal pet peeve about how to restructure my metroidvanias. I had to make sure that I wasn't putting the player in immediate danger when entering a new screen. Would you mind pointing out on the map which rooms/screens you noticed the issues with. I think I have a pretty good idea of which ones are the culprits, but I want to make sure so I can remember to address this in the future.

And thanks, yeah the rework was almost perfect for me personally. This is the first game that I can say I put thought into level design and managed to design almost all the rooms. I'll definitely let you guys know when the next MVM happens. I just didn't have the energy to dive immediately into the current one after this jam like I thought I would.

Haha thanks a lot for playing. I can definitely see a sequel happening down the road.

Thanks for playing. Yeah, I went into the jam to test out an idea of how to make my metroidvania framework faster. Writing the boilerplate stuff is time-consuming and takes time away from focus on designing levels. It ended up being a good choice, but I had completely neglected making it a fun game IMO. I will say that this has been the first game that I felt like I put some real thought into level design, so I'm happy about that.

While I'm probably getting hit hard in some of the categories, I'm really happy about how the jam turned out. I accomplished the goals I set, and even did my first animation - Tommy.

Thanks for playing! Oh, it definitely was influenced by Stranger Things. Metroidvanias are fun to make, but really challenging. As for Tommy, I don't think we've seen the last of him.

Thanks for playing. There were a few places that I intended to be tricky, but there were places where I assumed the player would intuitively know what I was going for and that was absolutely not the case. Thanks for the commenting on the caves! I was hopeful, but worried about how it would turn out.

Thanks for playing! Yeah, this was the first time I decided to go with rooms with a constant width and height. I liked the way I approached the structure, but I have a few personally issue with it that I need to look into solving. And yeah, I think one of the more common points of feedback I've been given is the difficulty with jumps. I tried to use that with a longer than usual coyote jump time to make up for how easy the game was. Only the cultists were actually difficult and they're still buggy. One issue is that is has a raycast that looks for ledges and then turns around if the ray isn't colliding with the ground. The problem is that once its out of its stagger state, it starts to check for the ground, see's that it's not there, and constant performs it's turn around. It's a quick fix, but I didn't notice the bug in time :S

Thanks for playing I wanted a more snappy movement feel, although I don't feel like I achieved that well. I've posted in other replies in-detail that my focus wasn't the game itself, just testing an idea of how to implement a different metroidvania framework. I haven't played Hollow Knight in while so I would have to play again to see how it controls.

Thanks again for playing.

Haha yeah, I definitely need to improve my art for it. And I like the idea of a bard system. As for the camera feeling a bit funky, that was one of biggest pet peeves and an important one. I enter the jam with the goal of implementing a different metroidvania framework than I have been using. It definitely sped up the process and I did want the camera to lerp to the center of the rooms once the player reaches the edge of the camera's view, but I think the issues lies on the camera itself. Thats one of the things that's on my list to explore and figure out if that was the case or something else.

Thanks for playing and leaving feedback!

Thanks, I tried to give it that vibe, but it wasn't one of my goals for this jam haha. I'm glad you played it and found it to be fun and not frustratingly difficult. I think I slacked off when it came to the player experience :S

That's good. A common criticism so far has been the jumps and getting stuck, so its nice to hear someone actually made it to the end haha. And yeah, I loved the music transition into the last area. It just feel like a solid mood for the area.

In regards to polish, ohhhh yeah. I can list a bunch of things off the top of my head. Quite a few wouldn't have taken that much effort and time, but when the end of a jam hits, you just get lazy and chalk it up to the nature of game jams.

I could definitely see another metroidvania with Tommy in the future once my art gets better haha

Thanks! Yeah, give it another go. Another helpful hint is that there are places that look and feel like you can't make the jump, but the coyote jump timer is really forgiving. Some leaps are misleading as well...

Thanks for playing! I came into this project focused on rewriting my framework for metroidvanias, so gameplay wasn't a factor until someone asked me if the controls were going to be floaty. Thanks for the comment on the attack animation. This is really the first I did my own pixel art (still very new to it).

As for the blocked door, if you are on the bottom floor in the center room, there is a door for the 2nd powerup and can only be triggered from the left side. It was an attempt to make players backtrack if they came into the save room on the right of that center of room.

As for the powerup explanations, I set those for the polish stage and was just too tired and short on time to make that changes and some others. Like you mention another about the controls section. I already had one setup in the main menu, so it was just lazy of me not to add that to the pause menu (WHOSE FONT IS SO BIG.)

I did everything myself except the music and font. I planned on making the music, but I was running out of time by that point.

Thanks again for playing and leaving feedback.

Most definitely. I went in with the goal of working on an idea of how to restructure my metroidvania framework. My other goal was to do my own art because I'm terrible and need to practice. In the end, I met most of my goals , but I would have liked to polished things that I didn't have time for.

Thanks for playing!

Thanls for playing! Theres a few jumps that are a little tricky and that one is one of them. Except for the final area, I think there's only one of the doors that react to the first power up.