Fellow game-dev here. Heya! Came from reddit (web?) post. Looks amazing and all the particle effects are great. Well done. Started working through a few levels on my lunch break and had a few thoughts for your consideration.
- Minor thing but maybe a few rooms for introducing core mechanics such as orb for opening the door.
- Picked up a blue diamond but have no idea why I did or what it did. Oh, found a red diamond and it was health. Only noticed because I was so low.
- The movement controls feel a bit floaty to me which could steal from the overall quality-feel.
- The steam vent on the second screen is a bit annoying in that I have no option but to wait. It would be nice if there were a risky path or the safe-and-wait path instead of just the wait path. Had to retry because I'm not getting how to latch onto a rope-swing very quickly. After half-dozen rope swing attempts to add the orb to the cliff "bowl" and failing...
- I just found the throw mechanic out of desperation to figure out the swing mechanic. Managed to throw from the ground instead of swinging over to do it which is what most people are going to try and do and it's a tough swing and it's a tough drop because there is no room to drop with you standing on the bowl.
- Made it a few more rooms before lunch break is over. It's got a decent learning pace. Feels like a few mechanics can have simpler introductions (swinging, throwing).
- Changing up the music a bit when fighting a little might help mix things up.
- Creatures have been pretty great. Shotgun vs orb felt overpowered although I felt like it was to easy to run off screen and make a mess of the overall encounter.
- On future runs, I will likely turn up the brightness because I couldn't see those black balls at all. Kept getting surprised by them and it felt a little unfair.
Really nice work all around. Game looks amazing.