Okay I played it more extensively now that I know how to progress (lol), and I can say it was pretty enjoyable now! Also have some feedback and bugs to squish:
- You can only jump when youre moving, so I'm pretty sure what I struggled with before was that I stood still while trying to push myself off of the ground, but you need to look down and be moving (with WASD). Its doable but its not as intuitive as always being able to jump.
- The turret enemies cant hit you if you stand still lol. Both projectiles go past you, so that took some pressure off!
- Turret enemies and flying enemies count as surfaces so when I was too close I could not shoot them, Instead my character tried to push them away, which unfortunately did not work :(
- Some soul drops were buggy, my highest score was 283 health and I'm pretty sure that was not intended.
- The homing missile is pretty overpowered as well. I was shooting enemies I did not even know were there because my missile just went on a 90 degree turn!
- Soul gates that detract your health are also active after you have crossed the gate once. So by going back and forth you could deplete a ton of souls unintentionally. Happened with me after the 2nd gate when enemies suddenly came flying at me and I wanted to step back to get more distance. Surprised me when I suddenly lost 30 health! I think its better if you just make opening the gates cost health, instead of going through them.
- I would advise placing checkpoints for this demo (maybe after each gate?), as restarting from the very beginning after you missed a long jump is kinda painful. Its just a demo anyway so once its more polished you could remove them.
- You could even tie it into the game mechanic by subtracting 10 healthsouls for a death? So players could play safer to build up some continues.
- An area around the 2nd gate does not have a death plane so I was just falling endlessly.
- And I really could not get past the 2nd gate, those jump after the gate and the 2 minute run back was just too much lol.
Overall pretty enjoyable gameplay loop though and good luck with further work!