I've got to admit I absolutely loved this game!
First off, I'm so happy to finally see another game on the SBIGBox! After an entire year without any new releases it was really just gathering dust - Happy to see it has a new system-seller!
As someone who is a big fan of musicals, and musical games especially, I was so excited to see this, and the musical numbers did not disappoint! It kinda reminded me somewhat of the musical numbers in the Donkey Kong tv series, where they'd sometimes cut to a completely different place and it would just be a bunch of wide shots of them singing.
The platforming was fairly difficult, and I definitely had some issues: one primary one was early on, where even though I'd passed the first checkpoint, when I missed the jump there was seemingly no way to actually get back to the checkpoint I had reached, as I had killed all the enemies so couldn't die. A "go to checkpoint" button might be in a good idea!
Also in another lesson of "never underestimate the player's stupidity", I did not realise the respawn button on the death screen was actually a respawn button. When I "died" I actually just continued playing the game with the Death UI in front of me, finishing the first level and going to the next level. (Still in slow motion!) I think I eventually softlocked myself and had to restart the game.
Though otherwise, I think the platforming and shooting is a really smooth! I am one of the biggest fans of 3D platformers (Rayman 3 is one of my favourite games of all time, and I was one of the first Kickstarter backers of "A Hat in Time" back in 2013! 😮) While this clearly had the aesthetic influences of a Bubsy 3D, it very much has the gameplay style of one of these more modern 3D platformers, optimised for mouse controls and being a lot more smooth and fluid in it's motion.
I did face one other issue where one of the checkpoints (the one on the wall next to the giant laser iirc) kept on pushing me off whenever I respawned. This was kinda annoying since there was quite a hard platforming bit there, but no biggie!
There was so much content here. It's amazing this was done in 9 days. You clearly worked very hard on this and it takes a unique mix of skill, creativity, and sheer perseverance that can lead to an achievement like this.
Are there things this game definitely should have? Yes. It probably should have had some sort of save system. Especially for a fairly long game with seemingly multiple endings. Then again, I get the urge when introducing some of those "nice to haves" might come at the expense of adding a certain cutscene or level. So I fully understand the tradeoff in the context of the jam.
Wow this was one of the longest reviews I wrote. I love both musicals and 3d platformers so this was totally up my alley! On a slightly related note, I've been debating for almost a year now about organising a game jam for games that are also musicals (with dedicated ways for people to find people to voice characters etc!). I don't think there has been a jam quite like that yet from my research and I would be interested in your thoughts about whether you'd think it would be an interesting idea!
Anyway, long post over. I loved this so much! One of my favourite entries so far! Well done!