Thoughts recorded during my playthrough
+ = I liked it
- = I didn't like it
* = Comment/neutral
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+ I love the intro. Great art!
+ The game art is lovely, too.
- Could use some background music in the intro stage
+ Having the "space" tooltip was a good touch
+ Having a "safe zone" at the start to figure out the controls is good
+ Introducing one mechanic at a time and forcing the player to learn how to use each thing in isolation. Perfect!
* The player animations are clear and detailed, but they seem a bit slow.
+ Movement and attack sound effects are spot-on
- Really missing having background music in this game.
+ I like how you have a chance to fully recover the first time you die
- That first boss (or is it a miniboss?) is really hard. It reacts too fast for me to hit-and-run it, and the movement patterns are too unpredictable for me to avoid the occasional jumps and other movements, so I died a lot.
- Another thing about the miniboss: it moves too fast to make use of the recovery item. The animation is so slow that it hits me before the animation completes, wasting the item.
+ Shop prices seem fair. I like how I'm presented with a couple of things that I can afford, then some aspirational ones (stuff I can buy later when I have more money)
* The bird enemies are funny - sometimes they swoop in from completely unfair angles and hit me, other times they just sit there and take hits.
+ Paths are set up so you don't have to/can't just spam cat dash all day.
+ If I land on spikes, I get teleported to a safe zone nearby so I don't take endless damage or instantly die. Nice!
+ I'm glad that I can retrieve lost atoms after I die
+ Oh, nice background music for the giant spider! I just wish there was more of this in the game!
* Not sure if the webs are too punishing. Although you don't take damage from the web when you get stuck in them, you have to do an awful lot of moving to get out of them, making avoiding enemies rather difficult. It also takes a lot of attacks to destroy them. They are webs for trapping the player, so I get that they need to be challenging somehow, so I'm not sure if there's a better balance or if I just need to git gud.
- That giant spider battle is ridiculous! I got into a place where I couldn't be damaged (a strange combination of taking damage and enemy positioning; it seems if the spiders are in a certain place when the player takes damage they will end up on top of the player but will not do damage) and spammed attack. It took dozens of hits to go down! I think the boss HP needs to be reduced.
- The cat climb is pretty fussy, so I took quite a bit of damage trying to get up through this area. In fact, I never made it past this point.
Summary
I quit after the spikes area. I need to move on. Sorry I didn't get to see the whole game, but what you have so far is pretty good! Some things need refining, such as the attack animations, and the lack of background music in most of the game is disappointing; However, the art and level design are good. Nice entry!