The mechanic of sprinting speeding the obstacles up sounded really cool at first, as it adds choice to something that in a lot of games (e.g. Mario) you would rather constantly be using. However, it doesn't feel very well executed, mostly because I was never sure whether I should speed up or not - you might know as developer, but as a player there was no way to figure it out. Combined with the fact that every challenge seemed to need frame and/or pixel perfect actions and it ended up being more of a game of luck (holding left/right and seeing if I made it through). I think this would work better with more open challenges with combinations of different obstacles - maybe some could slow down when you speed up instead.
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Absolutely, those are some really great points! Currently, most stages only has one solution, it ended up being a "rinse and repeat until you find the right solution" type of game. Once you know the trick it becomes really easy, I think this also essentially eliminate the "skill" element in my game that many great platformer has.
The fact that I know all the solutions to clear the stages has made me underestimated how hard the game is. That is definitely something I need to keep in mind next time while developing.
I think I can improve this by making levels with multiple solutions and perhaps adding some shortcuts that only can be done via manipulation of Speeding Up (for people who wanted the challenge and hopefully player will feel satisfied as well when they find a shortcut by themself). I also need to find ways to make it more obvious when to speed up/slow down, but that is something really hard to balance IMO. If it is too obvious, it will reduce the difficulty, and if it is not obvious, it can becomes very frustrating. Lot of things to consider, making a platformer is so much harder than I anticipated.
Thank you for your thought-provoking feedback!