I've give this game about 30 minutes or so, and I couldn't finish it.
I really liked the character creator. I'm generally a sucker for character customisation in games. This one obviously is simple, due to game jam constraints, however, it works and I was able to create Poopsickle, the pink and teal, baseball cap wearing tanned and blond nonce with an earring that looks slightly baffled. He was my character and that increases the relatability of the game, in my opinion. I tried calling him Smelly, by the way, but the game didn't like that!
The initial part of the game's narrative worked OK, with some 4th wall breaking. It did grow repetitive and long later, however. From my perspective, too much dialogue, too little playing.
I used an Xbox controller to play, as suggested by the game. The game also said I couldn't complain about the controls, but I'm going to. First the good bits: the game has modular jumping and grace jump as well, which is very rare in game jam entries. Pleasantly surprised to find it here. However, there is no predictable air control, so stopping going left or right in the air immediately stops you, and you can zig zag, which is very hard to control. The same goes for ground movement, it's either all in, or nothing, making precision platforming challenging. Lastly, I don't dig the fact that the jump doesn't really have an arc. When the apex is reached, you immediately start plummeting at max speed. Arguably predictable, but not for me.
The character's invulnerability time is too low, especially when hit by spikes from underneath. This leads to a lot of multiple damaging hits in a row, with little predictability.
I appreciated the frequent checkpoints, however, I found some of them not to work, which forced me to repeat large sections.
The worst part of the player interactions by far is combat. All attacks, both melee and ranged, have substantial delay to them. It makes it difficult to predict and needlessly annoying to deal with enemies. Down and up attacks are finicky, because humans are terrible with analogue sticks. Rogue Legacy is an example of a game that struggles in this area too. I suspect this is why the dev suggested to use the Down direction on a D-Pad instead in a tutorial.
Let's tackle the premise of the game. The game is a large tutorial. From my perspective, this is a poor choice, because tutorials are the least fun part in a game. I really started feeling despondent toward the game over time due to the premise. As for the theme, it's used in dialogue every now and then, but clearly an afterthought.
The art is strange. The character looks and animates great, but by comparison, the enemies are simplistic and seem cobbled together last minute. The biggest issue, however, is with the colour palette. Everything (and I mean everything, even the UI) is 1 colour + Shades of grey: teal. That makes the BG and FG not stand out very well, and the levels look really samey really quickly. So, the art has care in it, but I don't support the artistic vision is a way of putting it, I suppose. Lastly, I think the Particle Systems and the Trail on jumps don't look very good AND don't really fit the toony art style.
Music is alright, but because the game is so long, the loop gets boring quick. The sound effects are fine until you encounter enemies. You hitting them has one of the least empowering SFX I've ever heard. It sounds like me dropping an empty can of tuna onto a wooden floor.
Strange entry for a game jam. Very large game, with little in it unfortunately.