So first I have to ask -- is there any ending to the game? I played in to it maybe about half an hour or so, and at that point the game started to lag really hard. I couldn't tell if this was just a problem with my browser acting up (the game first started to lag seemingly when I received an email?) but I couldn't figure out a way to refresh the game and restore my progress.
However, in these cases, when source code is available, I do like to try to see if I can recover my progress just by hacking the game :) but from looking at the source code, it seems like there is no actual ending point to the game.
I would definitely recommend saying something about that in the description, or something, because had the game not started to lag I probably would have kept playing for at least an hour or more, thinking that there was an ending at some point (and that the game just happened to be really long).
And, just as a side idea: one thing I sometimes do in jam games is provide some kind of level select or fast-forward cheat code. I figure that losing progress if you happen to need to reboot the game for whatever reason basically means that, if any players ever do need to reboot the game, they are simply going to quit playing at that point. And there's no real harm in providing unfettered access to the whole game.
One other small criticism: The tutorial text, as well as the benches, both require pressing E to interact with. But... there's nowhere that tells you to press E to interact with interactable objects. I figured this out simply by trying E when I saw the notes, because they looked interactable, and I felt like E might be the right key. But I didn't figure out benches were interactable until I got to the second bench, figured it must be some kind of checkpoint somehow, and then figured out that I could use E.
So, perhaps it would make sense to say somewhere: use E to interact, and then have one of the tutorial notes say "rest at benches with E" or whatever. (It can be as explicit or implicit about them being a checkpoint as you like... but knowing they're interactable at all is usually helpful).
All that said, there was a lot of cool stuff here.
One thing I really, really appreciate about this game is the combat system. So, we read this note that we can punch with the left mouse button. And then we go and try to punch the robots and immediately get destroyed, because it's really dang hard to punch robots to death.
And we have to rethink it a little bit, and realize that punching is basically completely useless, and that the only real way to destroy the robots is drop them off the ledge, or maybe to just outright jump over them.
This is great. It is wonderful, in my opinion, to have this punching mechanic with its only real purpose to be demonstrating its own uselessness.
I did eventually manage to actually kill some robots by punching without being killed myself, but.. this is still way harder than dropping them off the ledge, so the point still stands.
It's also a sort of fun bit of realism, so to speak. Like, in real life, you do technically have the option of punching a killer robot (were you to encounter one). But, in real life, you would almost certainly never exercise this option. So having options that you will never choose to use is a fundamental property of the real world, and incorporating it into a game is therefore creating a kind of realism.
I also like some of the little subtleties of the combat system. For example, if the robots are still activated while they're falling of the edge, they come very close to the other side and can hit you there if you're standing too close. But if you happen to walk far enough way for them to deactivate (with the question mark), they drop straight down... making this a more effective technique. I believe I only ever performed it by accident, sadly, but it's still cool.
I would say the combat was quite engaging, really, in a lot of the game that I played. I would often decide between jumping over a robot or leading it off the edge, depending on how many robots there were, how much space was available, etc. One of the most interesting situations was robots that were very close to the edge. This required some precision jumping to activate the robot and then immediately jump backwards to the previous platform. (I do think it would be helpful to have some coyote time in the situation -- sometimes I felt like I pushed jump, but fell to my doom, which was a little frustrating).
Other things I liked: it's neat how the benches take a little while to heal you up, with the litlte heart particle effect. This is a nice touch.
I like the way the robot sprites are designed. They look kind of like zombies, or like someone doing something silly with their hands, and this is a fun take on the evil robot appearance.
The player sprite is good too. I feel like the punching animation is quite appropriate for how useful I found punching to be in combat.
The parallax background is quite nice as well.