It's sad that this game needs to exist but I'm glad to have played it. It's well made and feels very real. I hope that with this game you have managed express some of your feelings in a form that others can understand and that the process has also been healing for yourself, in some extent at least. All the best to you in the future.
I have listed below some comments about the game, mostly from game design perspective. If some of by suggestions goes against your vision you don't worry about them. These are just my thoughts after all:
- The controls were a bit difficult. I understand that in some levels this was partially meant to be that way but the same difficulties existed in Denial level which might not have been intended. Improving the character controls in general but still have the slow high gravity settings in selected places might make the effect even stronger. It's hard to say exactly what felt wrong about the controls but I would guess it was about jumping and air movement. One specific thing that I notice is that after after jumping straight up it is actually impossible to in the air so to jump to left or to right one has to first move to the direction and only after that jump. This is different than in most other games and was on of the things that made some of the platforming sections more difficult that I would imagine to be intended.
- The game is an very creative interpretation of the theme and there is very clear narrative. The way you have used different style of level layouts and game mechanics to match emotions is very well done. This reminds of the game Journey which is famous for it's story telling trough varying the movement of the main character. I would be interested to hear if you have been familiar with this concept before or did think about using movement mechanics to show emotions/story only yourself. In any case, this kind of thinking is quite advanced game design, I would say. More on each level below:
- Depression:
- I know that it is bit contradictory to say this but the first level was really really demanding to play trough because the character moved so slowly. I understand the metaphor / narrative meaning here and (as said before) I really like the way you use different movement mechanics in different levels but currently the first level is so slow that I'm afraid that most people would not have the determination needed to play trough it. This is totally okay, if your goal with the game was study your own emotions but if you want to also be able to share your emotions trough this game you might consider making compromises to make the first level more easily playable. I don't mean to ruin your vision by any means. I'm just saying that I like your game and it would be really shame if other players would not see the rest of it because the feel too frustrated by the first level. My suggestion would be to have the character generally just a bit faster than it is now (it can and still should be slower than normal game characters) and then use certain areas (like the hands) to radically slow down the movement. Having higher difference between the "slow" and "really slow" speeds would also make those bottom moments more easy to notice and have higher impact.
- The up and down hills shape of the level is really fitting for this level. Also grayscale visual is excellent choice
- Denial:
- Colorful second level was nice contrast after the first level. Good visuals here too!
- As mentioned before there was some difficulties with the movement and jumping that were especially noticeable in this level because it had a lot of platforming
- Most interesting moment was when one of the speech bubbles told a sad story, the platform was flipped and I fell directly to the black hands trap.
- Anger:
- This was a bit weird level compared to the others. I didn't really understand the new mechanics (Q and E buttons if I remember correctly) or why I suddenly died and taken to the previous level. In the end I solved the level just by moving trough everything without using the abilities at all. I wonder if it was intended to be beatable like that?
- The background music was especially fitting in this level
- Regret:
- The stone walls were nice metaphor. Although I think they were not always optimally placed. They usually were not blocking the path that I was using so their appearance did not affect my playing as much as I think was intended. Maybe the level design in this level could be finetuned so that the player would experience the effect of the walls more frequently. You could consider making more easy looking routes to lure player to those paths and then block them and force the player to use more difficult route instead, or even backtrack their steps
- Acceptance:
- An easy last level with nice atmosphere was rewarding experience after all the difficult levels
- The narrative was also wrapped up nicely here. The ending was very good.
- Although I have to warn you that my friend who was also playing the game first thought that flying to the sky represented suicide. Just so that you that there are multiple interpretations
- Lastly, reverting back to previous levels was interesting mechanic but after first two times it became quite frustrating. Especially when it can happen that one drops multiple levels on a row. I think I once dropped from the level 4 all the way back to level 1. The good thing here is that you have took that into account by allowing the player to return back just by completing one level to the end, which makes it a lot better than if player would need to play all the levels again in that scenario (I would surely quit if that would happen). Although this also creates weird strategies that you might not have intended: if player drops from level 3 to level 2 they actually should intentionally drop themselves to level 1 because the end section of level 1 is easier than the end section of level 2. You could maybe consider limiting the number of situation in which the player falls to the previous level to lessen the chance that someone quits the game before getting to the end.
Overall: very strong theme and narrative with clever use of game mechanics to deliver the message.