Although a bit nitpicky for a game jam, i found your insights valuable, but i would like to raise a few counterpoints. Not to prove, that what you are saying is wron in any way, but to give a reason to why things are done the way they are. So i will go in order:
(1-2) The current scaling system was developed purely because it gives the most opportunities for puzzles without significantly raising the complexity of the movement system. And i fully aggree with you on that it's notwhere intuitive enough without a good in-game tutorial or explaination, but with a limited time available, i had tu cut corners wherever i could and tutorials are quite time consuming to create and take time away from developing the main gameplay.
(3) Rock climbing and the first ladder section should absolutely have been flipped. This was a bad call on my part. I just wanted to introduce the main mechanic before the section after the wall climbing, which is still too hard.
(4-9) These are the sort of issues that play-testing is there to prevent. But with a 96 hour hard limit on development while working alone, I unfortuanately couldn't get basically any playtesting done with real players (aka not me).
So unfortunately it's true that a lack of good controls and intuitiveness had a real impact on this game, but I still think, that it was a worthy tradeoff this time and this situationm is preferrable to having a polished game with great controls and an intuitive tutorial, but basically no content at all.
And btw it was my first time moaning alone in a room in front of a microphone, especially with sticks, so i think it was a good attempt at that.
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Thank you for the explanation, and yes sorry for being a bit of a nit-pick. It is a game jam after all you're right. Not in any way was this some sort of gamer rage rant on your game or anything, but more or less keep as a good piece of information to keep in mind for whatever game you make next. For a game jam this is definitely very impressive, I only am commenting because I have seen a lot of comments about jankiness but nobody has gone into detail on what exactly people got stuck on, so i thought it would be useful if I described what I got stuck on in more detail.
Again, hope you didnt take offence this was more or less just a description of my playthrough as a playtester. And again I want to just say that although I got stuck on many things the level of polish was definitely apparent I couldnt help but be impressed by the consistency of the art style and gameplay despite some parts being frustrating. So really good job!