I really like the aesthetics and I think the presentation through a TV screen is quite unique. The graphics are excellent. The design of Tiki, her character, the setting, jumping over rooftops and taking down “monsters” with the Moonbeam Hildegard feels quite magical girl-like which is great. I have no problems with the platforming controls, it feels excellent. In terms of level design, I died to a blind drop once but once I knew there was such a thing, I knew to use my magical girl prowess to double jump + the feather-like drop helps (I noticed I can actually fall, then jump, and double jump, which is essentially triple-jumping and I think it is a good design choice). I don’t know why but on my first run of the game, the checkpoint didn’t trigger and I had to go through all the dialogue again on death, which perhaps needs fixing; maybe I jumped quite high in a way that skips the checkpoint trigger area?
The only criticism I have is that there doesn’t seem to be any actual “routes” integrated into the gameplay as mentioned in the game jam overview. The dialogue system is there but there is only one choice, which means the player cannot actually influence any relationship in any way. Though I can see remnants of this with the “<3” and “</3”, and the game page has many more characters who I thought I would meet. It doesn’t have to go through the dialogue system: the boss doesn’t do anything at the end, so I thought maybe there’s a way to not beat him up and get a route, but I tried exploring and experimenting for a bit and it doesn’t seem like there’s a way, at least not in the current version of the game. If this is not the case, please let me know. At its current state, it is a platformer with dialogue, but not so much a platformer Ren’ai mashup. Even if it is a single-route game, there is always a way to influence the relationship among characters, and that’s the part I think Magical Girl Tiki lacks.
With that said, visual novel dialogue is actually a strong identifier of the Ren’ai genre, so seeing it being implemented, plus the remnants of choice means it is still good in my book - it just lacked the content to demonstrate it. So my rating is still decent on the mashup category.
Overall, this game is excellent in most aspects with a ton of promise. I look forward to seeing it be developed further. Well done!