Hi, I finished Sal's Sundae & wanted give my feedback. I wrote done some criticisms, but nothing here means I thought the game was bad, I just wrote down all the thoughts I had while playing.
First of all, the graphics and atmosphere were fantastic and incredibly well polished. You did a great job with the food theme too, really making the game revolve around food. One minor thing I liked, it was really cool how the background changed color at the same time the music changed when entering a new zone.
It was great to see so many features that I didn't expect to see in a game jam version, like auto-save and pausing. It was very nice to have both of things implemented while I was playing. I always like to see the character get healed when they pick up a health upgrade, so that was nice too.
The gameplay was fun. The jump worked great for me and the pan was really fun to use. I do have one thing I'd like to see different about the pan - it would be nice if it automatically came back when it's far away from the character, because it takes a long time for it to come back if you forget about it & recall it from far away.
As for criticisms, there is one major one. There were way too many projectiles on screen at the same time in some parts. Unfortunately the worst of it was at the beginning, when the player is still getting used to the controls. I would ease way up on that. It's very easy to underestimate how hard that is to deal with, but even 2 projectiles coming from different places at once can be extremely hard to dodge, and 3 or more is almost impossible for anyone but hardcore players. It's also easy to miss when you placed the enemies yourself & end up playing through the level multiple times. It's always good to err on the side of making the game too easy rather than end up with parts that are almost impossible for your players.
There was another issue that might have just been overlooked - the player loses control of the character when collecting a powerup to show an animation and message, but the enemies and projectiles are still active, and the hero can still be hit and damaged while you can't control him. A bee got a free hit on me at one point, but fortunately the powerup I had picked up was a tomato & my health was full when I took damage. I would suggest either pausing the whole game, or making the player invicible during the message, plus giving them temporary invincibility after (the same as if they'd just been hit).
It would be nice to be able to jump down through the jump-thru platforms. No big deal, and I can imagine it might have been cut because of time limitations and not on purpose, but it would feel a lot of better for the player if you could do that.
It would also be good to give some indication of how to use the powerups when you get them. Even if it's something subtle, like marks in the wall that make it look like someone else climbed it with a knife. A short animation of the chef using the powerup would be great too, to leave no doubts for the player.
It was fun to play & I was very impressed with the style. Good luck with it in the future!