This was pretty fun, altought it do still need some tweaks honestly.
I love the idea of the grapple mechanic, but in execution it felt really weird. In fact, from the games I played on this jam this was the hardest to get used to controls so far (And in the end I actually didn't really, and by consequence I didn't explore everything I could sadly). I believe this might be due to my little vendetta against "spacebar to jump in a 2D game" thought, if you used a key like, "H" I would probably have had a better time. I'm usually a quick adapter tho, it's really rare for spacebar to bother me that much, but that was one of the cases unfortunatelly.
But hey, that aside, grappling around was still super fun tho, even if a little janky. Altought I have to say that most of the time I felt like I didn't had real control on wheter it would actually pull me or not, it kinda just did it when it felt like it.
I also couldn't quite figure out what the hat did, whenever I tried using it it just stopped all my horizontal momentum, so I legit couldn't even jump on water with it. Believe me, I really tried, but in the end I just jumped over the lake by abusing the grapple jump a little bit. I also tried to stomp an enemy with it, but honestly, I didn't actually expect it to work, so I wasn't dissapointed when it didn't anyway x)
The upgrade still looks really funny tho, so even if it ended up kinda useless for me I still love it by just existing, it's simply genius.
Combat fells very basic, but it gets the job done. Some complaints tho, There's legit no feedback for when the player takes damage at all, so it feels very awkward (I mean, there is a sound effect, but it's really not enought to get the point across). There was also one single time that I died in a way that I could clearly see the hitbox sizes, and they seem to be the exact same as their sprites, wich can feel bad sometimes, so next time I recommend you to make them way smaller.
The artstyle is pretty simple, but it's also very charming, and the music is great too, I love the funky theme from the interiors. I also just LOVE the elders man, they're the most charismatic NPCs I've ever seen on a game jam and I will protect them with every fiber of my existance. For real, the fact that the elderly elder is just an elder with 2 hats, fuggin gorgeous, I love him. I also spent almost all my Lotuses with the item that tastes good, and I have absolutely no regrets xD
I guess that's it, I recorded my run so if you wanna see it, then just ask, altought I already warn that most of it is me struggling to use the grapple properly lol