I just finished the Alpha 1.0 version. The level design was pretty solid and so were the enemies, it will certainly get better as things to reward exploration and checkpoints are added (restarting a whole second level or room after falling was a tad frustrating).
There are three (or four) things I would like to point out.
- The speed of the spear coming back. I understand it should take some time to punish the player so that it doesn't get thrown out without much thought, but perhaps based on distance (if the spear is far away from the player) or after some time (let's say, 2 or 3 seconds after the spear has been thrown) you can make it come faster. There were times where I left my spear behind and moved with the dashes, only to encounter an enemy and be left defenseless for quite some time while I wait for my spear to come back... This even happened to me with the second boss.
- The dash ability might need a second or two of cooldown. It appears you'll want to have open areas for your rooms in the game, so perhaps a dash ability that lets you dash over and over without touching the ground will be hard to balance... You wouldn't want to design your level too restrictively, but having open areas might allow the player to just dash all the way to the other side (similar to how Kirby games mostly allow for the player to fly and avoid most of the game, so to speak).
- The Jackalope felt a bit too slippery. And this is a big one for me. As I was getting acquainted with the controls, stopping after reaching max speed usually still moved me about half a block, and that made me fall. In the first level it was a small annoyance to fall to a lower level and have to climb back up, but on the second level it costed me a couple of retries. Perhaps look into it's acceleration a bit, or add some coyote time to allow the player to make jumps some frames after they fell from a platform.
- A final one might be, although it depends on your design and how much it fits into what your vision for the game is, maybe you can go through the spear if you're coming from under it... Like a thin platform, if that makes sense... It would make climbing much smoother, you can even make it drop-through.
I've got a bug at the very start when I first opened the game were my A and D keys were swapped... It fixed itself after a while and I could not replicate it, sorry I can give more information on that... Also, W and S make the Jackalope animate but do nothing right now.
I've got a bug on my second playthrough, were fighting against the boss, I stayed near the gate and started attacking repeatedly without moving... Just as I was attacking over and over and I got hit, the boss died and this happened, perhaps the dead body pushed me inside.
Either way, I enjoyed it, you did a good job and should be proud of what you've accomplished. I've seen how detailed your updates on Twitter are and wish you nothing but the best!