Semi-on-the-fly remarks:
- The Paper Mario-y visual style is great, and the Little Prince-y rotating world too. :)
- At first, I thought you had to press when the key name went over the blue-shirt character… X) I may be absent-minded. Maybe lowering the camera a bit so that the character appears above the bar would help avoid this confusion.
- I think a sound indication when we succeed or lose at pressing a button would greatly help understand what is going on.
- When the small disc nears the right, it become very hard to press the right key at the right moment!! :o
- Controls are QWERTY-only instead of layout-independent (I have an AZERTY keyboard), which makes it quite hard for me to handle some keys.
- At some point, I mistook the down arrow indication for a V; a bit silly on my part. X) But this could be avoided by adding a small arrow line.
- You can apparently choose a different level when three lockets are shown in the sky; how can you guess what these will be? Is it up to the player to figure out? The symbols are cute, but mysterious.
Ah, they may represent the boss’s symbol? - Beat the game! :) With the giant four-(or three-?)phase one-eyed boss at the end. Seeing the lockets, there may be different paths (and bosses) to the end!
Takeaway: very pleasant visually, although sounds would greatly enhance playability as a cue for the player. Also, I feel there is a difficulty imbalance: in ‘one-line’ mode, it becomes super hard to get the right keys towards the right, but in ‘two-halves’ mode, the rhythm seems to stay constant (and this would be even easier playing at two as you suggest). I like the apparent non-linearity of the ‘adventure’! I also think the theme was incorporated purely in the narration/context instead of gameplay, which can be totally fine, but I admit I tend to love gameplay/concept twists, while you went for a classic game style/genre. Edit: as some comments hint at, you may also want to add some more indications on how to play (you can still do it on the game page!); some text or interactive tutorial would help. I myself had some trouble figuring out the disc at the beginning, as I said in my point about my blue-shirt blunder. X)
Thank you for the (tandem) ride! :)