Great entry! There were some buggy aspects and some small things that made the playtime a bit frustrating. I'll start with those before I get into what I loved about the game.
(Also, for what it matters, I played the web build)
- The map was really cool from a style perspective, but it was kinda hard to actually use it for navigation. Your attention is drawn to the collision objects rather than the pathways between.
- It was small but a little annoying that saving also changed my weapon, but this really only affected me to any significant degree once.
- Something happened during the first big chasm you have to use the grappling hook for where I managed to pull myself inside of the grapple blocks and I was stuck there.
- This is probably a Me issue, but keyboard and mouse controls for these kinds of games are always a bit unwieldy for me, at least on my laptop, and it made that same grappling hook challenge a bit harder than probably intended. Also was hard to keep track of where my mouse was during boss fights.
- Mechanics seemed to get really wonky during the bosses. Hit boxes and collisions got weird, the controls were getting less responsive, the slow time ability was activating and staying activated when I wasn't clicking. I mostly ran into this issue with the first boss, though the second one was doing it a bit. It seemed like going out of full screen and clicking on the page before clicking back into the game fixed the responsiveness of my attacks, though.
- Something weird happened with the NPC dialogue in the Future/3rd world, where the dialogue disappears before you can fully read it and seemed like it was reformatting itself. Getting it to show long enough to read and without the reformatting would be great.
- Some proper backtracking through the different timelines would have been kind of nice, as well as an optional area or two, but that also comes with my own Metroidvania expectations. If there were any, I didn't find them(didn't find any of the purple doors that were mentioned?). I also understand this probably had a lot to do with time considering you were a solo dev.
- The first boss felt like a massive difficulty spike for me and took me a long time to defeat. The 2nd and third boss were much easier in comparison and took only like 2 deaths each.
And now on to the GOOD:
- The art was excellent. The worlds felt distinct, the character was charming, and the enemies were all unique. I really thought the boss designs were sick. They stood out the most to me in an impressive way.
- Using Heal as a Parry attack was brilliant, and ended up being vital to the boss fights, especially the last one. I feel like I could have done the first boss easier had I remembered the ability was there(not a fault of your own, my own for forgetting).
- The level design was handled really well. I think you did a good job of utilizing all of the abilities to a fairly even degree. The final world had some challenges that felt like it was putting the dash, double jump, and run consecutively in an intuitive and satisfying way. Gave a strong feeling of, "Now put it all together before the end of the game!" The grappling hook became a bit less relevant by the time you have the double jump, but it was the most effective offensive attack until the Fireball due to its range, so that makes it not fully forgotten.
- Also, I didn't know I could kill the NPCs. Felt legit guilt when I blew up the person who gave me the fireball lol. Nice touch, though! Would have been even more impactful if they were permanently dead, but intentional or not, it just adds that much more subtle depth to the game.
- The final boss actually was a decent challenge, and until I realized I could infinitely double jump there(an exploit or intended?), I was having some trouble. I also love the plot reveal at the end. Made the game feel more personal and more to enjoy from an emotional perspective. I hope you felt satisfied with the outcome here, because you did good work.
- The music was awesome. I saw you credited it to an asset pack - did it all come from there? It definitely fit the vibe and helped me want to keep playing.
Overall, the weaknesses were pretty small in comparison to the full package, and the vibes and gameplay were strong enough to make me perservere through the rough parts. Great work here!