First time playing. Oh man this is one of those games I feel guilty playing because it's so complete and polished already.
No bugs to report over 1hr 5m of playtime.
The combat is interesting and I love the idea of removing enemy collision hurtboxes when you get some hits on them. Feels very rewarding. Didn't find myself using the charge attack much. Projectile deflecting was cool but sometimes it did this weird interpolation and fizzled out before hitting the mob. Not sure if intended.
Levels felt fine. I don't know if it's a good idea to introduce alternate gravity (walking on walls, ceilings, etc) that early into the game but it felt natural. The one room I had a problem with that just felt wrong was the room with the key in the futuristic mecha base. The angles it puts you in just felt so disorienting and wrong. There was also a rope a bit too close to a swinging platform in one of the earlier rooms. They intersect at a point and its like weird. Other than that it was fun.
I was kind of sad when I got to a new area and there wasn't a teleporter within the immediate vicinity. I know that's a really big lame boring design thing but in a game like this I want to immediately go back and explore when I reach a new area and when there's not a checkpoint I get into "I'll go back as soon as I get a checkpoint" mode and then oops I cleared another zone. The maps DID help a lot with finding stuff when I actually got used to reading them, so there's that.
Art is charming. I love any game that lets me be a badass wizard guy. I noticed a lot of things didn't have sounds but I honestly think the game is better off with minimal sounds because the visuals are chaotic as there are many things flying around like rocks and pumpkins and wooden chests all over the place, and adding sounds onto those might just be overwhelming.
Not sure if i'm just getting old or what but I did find it hard to see enemies sometimes in comparison to the background but it wasn't too bad. This goes the same for objects that you can hit versus objects you can't, as well as little critters that are just there for flavor vs a landmine and such. Found myself hitting the air many times.
The gimmicks work out great. The initial shock of dying in one hit quickly vanished when I realized you can literally just rewind before you got hit. Even if that was the only mechanic in the entire game it would be enough to make a clever little game.
BUT obviously there's a lot more to work with than just the rewind! I unlocked almost all of the spells except for one? I think? Guess i'll give my random thoughts.
Coil: I think stuff recoils too fast and it makes stuff like the reverse-conveyor-belt-fire-trap-thing hard. Granted, I don't know if that was the 'intended' strategy for that puzzle but it definitely might be nicer if it was a bit smoother. I like that I can use it as a projectile though when fighting enemies.
Surge: Never really used this to make stuff faster, just kind of used it as a chain lightning thing (this got me killed many times from charged enemies)
Spike: The most broken one IMO. Slowing down stuff makes traps much easier to deal with, but that's kind of needed I guess. Pretty much carried me in the entire last secret level.
Backtrack: Didn't really see myself use this except once at the beginning. Maybe i'm not big brain enough to use.
Twist: There were definitely places where using this would have been better than the other spells but I didn't use it much. I think not being able to jump while using it kind of sucks.
Remnant: Didn't realize what this did until the end. Thought it would be used for dual-switch puzzles or something.
Discontinuity: The only time I ever got a game over was when using this lmao. The potential for puzzles with this thing is nuts but it's definitely scary to use which I think is a good thing.
Dash: There were definitely times I used this in conjunction with other stuff, but the weird angle it puts you at when going from above is a bit awkward.
No idea where the other spell was. I might go back for a bit and play some more and explore more stuff because it's very fun.
Sorry if it's a lot to read. Don't bother addressing anything I just wanted to share my thoughts. You made a very special game and it really deserves recognition. I hope you can get into early access ASAP! 