Very cool project!
The characters were a little obnoxious, but you do have the option to skip dialogue. The dialogue for SAM was great though! Lol! Some of the hit boxes to trigger dialogues seemed a bit hard to trigger, maybe try making those bigger.
I really like how you can string moves together to gain momentum! Although I think my character got stuck in an infinite falling loop after talking to someone while I think I had been dashing? (I had to restart the level...) I did notice sometimes I was going way too fast and over- jumped where I was trying to land. It would be nice if there was some way to cancel your momentum in the air to go backwards, without stomping down to your death.
The level design was pretty good - I like how it was open world-esque, but along paths - and the warps were helpful. My advice would be to keep the level designed to keep the momentum going. (Instead of putting treasure chests along the sides of the main path, put them near the center, where they can be hit in a row, or zig-zaging. The treasure chests along the rings worked perfectly! Also, if there was a way to speed up those wooden fan blades for a short time, maybe by hitting the center, that would add to the momentum.)
It might also help to combine the role of health with the silver collectibles. Or have the warps act as healing stations or something like that.
Sometimes I got a bit lost. It would help to have access to the same maps you see in the warp areas anywhere in the level.
It would be nice if you could have an option to invert the camera x &/or y axes from the options menu.
One last thing - while fighting the boss, it would be helpful if there was a way to focus the camera on him while fighting (not when he's dashing around of course).
But overall I enjoyed it!
It would also be nice if I could kick the side kick around ! lol!