Congrats on completing the jam! I beat all of the levels!
This is a nice short and sweet game! I can see how replayability and trying to get a faster time would be nice. I think that you could encourage the time trial and getting better times, by ranking the player's time out three stars and/or also considering leaderboards.
In terms of feedback for how polished the game was - I think it could be improved in the following ways:
- Audio - Needs BGM and SFX
- The gamepad didn't work with the menus - fully supporting all your inputs is important
- Additional animations for when you get hit would be nice for feedback - sometimes I died without knowing that I was hit
- The level design needs to be improved. I know that the game is simple but the level design leads to general game feel which leads to overall polish.
To be clear, for the sake of this feedback - polish is more about how well the game is put together, how cohesive it is and how well your design intention is communicated and actually experienced by the player.
For the level design in particular:
- Because enemies are the goal to kill having them lined up in a way that leads to navigating the level in a roughly obvious way is important (think sonic/mario rings/coins)
- The levels are too large and I spent quite a bit of time wandering around to find the enemies or backtracking
- There are no movement mechanics for quickly going up/down a hill/cliff and no way to jump/dash over water so time is wasted trying to find where to go up/down or get across. Would be nice to have that movement option
- Levels should also be designed to allow for multiple different approaches. For example, you could kill all the enemies on the first floor before killing on the second. Or kill on the way up to the second, kill the second floor, then drop down and finish off the first floor. It gives people ways to optimize their route.
Great job!