Wow awesome! The story and depth is really impressive. Love the foreshadowing and sneak peaks of the powers you will attain as you go through the first areas. However... at a certain point I did start to feel impatient waiting for a powerup after seeing 3-4 screens I couldn't pass through — and the mysterious sand orbs I wasn't sure how to interact with. They looked like powerups to me. However (again) this DID make it feel super satisfying to finally get the winged sandals. I really felt the impact of the upgrade since I had a long journey with the bare minimum to finally get them! The next few powerups felt similarly. The levels were really well-designed to make you anticipate how much the next powerup will help you — having the wall jump and meticulously wall-jump when there are breakable blocks and gusts of wind around which would make it SO much easier (eventually). I really liked that aspect of it, and the backtracking and navigation feel worthwhile. The map did sometimes feel a bit sprawling, though. Some screens were fun, others felt a bit unchallenging.
I appreciated the frequency of save points as well. The character writing and story was really intriguing too. I think the rogue assassin enemies looked a little too much like our friends though, so one time I got backstabbed thinking I could talk to him and took my hand off the mouse to press Enter :P Never again lol
Awesome work on this!!! I'm going to have to come back and finish my playthrough. (Just got to the wind jumps — really cool mechanic!!)