Thanks so much for the feedback! I always appreciate when someone takes the time to check out my game and let me know what they think!
I'll try to go in order addressing the points you made:
-The sound was honestly just added as a rush job to give the game a bit better of a feel. I totally forgot to update the starting text to reflect that. Good catch, I actually already put out a little patch to address something you mentioned later in your message before I really thought about this point, so I'll definitely get on this and some of the other stuff you mentioned over the course of tonight and tomorrow.
-Yes you are supposed to be able to double jump from any point, no matter what... as long as you haven't already jumped or performed an action that recharges your double jump while midair. I'm probably giving away a little nugget that someone would rather discover on their own but there are several instances in these levels where it would be advantageous to save your double jump for some creative movement while you're in the air. Though what specifically you can do with that is up to you. I wanted the system to be very freeform and forgiving in how you go about your movements.
-I know... you can't tell exactly what skills you have and what mouse button they're bound to while in a mission. It's something on my endless to-do list... and it's pretty close to the top so expect that to change shortly as well.
-The falling leaves effect does have an odd behavior, and it's not really necessary for anything so I just removed it. Honestly, I totally forgot it was even going on having playtested my game so much... I don't even see them anymore lol...
-This one is another thing I've definitely got to work on and is near the top of my priorities list as well. I realize that despite the rather simple appearance, getting into and understanding exactly what my game really is, I feel is probably going to be rather confusing and off putting in these early stages of the development process. There are already some pretty complicated systems that I built into this game and they don't immediately show themselves as something that are available to you and that you can do, for instance you can change your skills, you can chain certain skills together for certain effects, some characters have vastly different stats and uses, I could go on but I think the point's been made. Generally working on my game's accessibility is probably the #1 thing I've got to focus on for the moment.
-THIS POINT!!! You sir... have done me more of a favor by pointing out this bug than you even know. I thought I had quashed all of the major bugs that destroy the game feel before I released this demo. I'm very glad you caught this one for me so early on. It would have been rather embarrassing to have it persist when there's such an easy fix. This is actually that fix that I mentioned that I made to the game earlier, I just patched up this bug real quick. It shouldn't be happening anymore.
-The meat grinder level is quite difficult, yes... that's why it's called the meat grinder. It is possible to get through the end of that map without taking any damage but it is by no means easy. That map I feel perfectly shows off the thing I love most about how everything in the game is set up, but it also perfectly exemplifies how insanely steep the learning curve for game difficulty will be if I'm not careful with how I set up the early game content in the future. Figuring out how to teach people all of these different game mechanics through gameplay without it feeling like a super long and handhold-ey tutorial will definitely be a learning experience for me. If you've got any suggestions for how I could go about tackling parts of this problem, I'm all ears!
-There actually is an enemy counter in the pause menu, but that goes back into the point that I already made. It's not apparent enough in that specific mission type. I'll add an enemy counter to the top of the screen in the combat missions so that people don't feel like you said, the mission feeling endless.
There's definitely quite a bit of work that I've got to do to polish up my game more, and the feedback really does help a lot. I'm working with a pretty big concept so it's pretty difficult for me to get my head outside of that space and to look at it from an outside perspective... but I guess that's what other people are for, so thanks again!