FLOOD: The Crystal Ninja

• I feel like the exit and play are reversed. I would assume I need to use the game's mechanic to play the game while not using it to exit.
• I like that this was the settings menu though
• In difficult precision platformers, you usually don't want a long transition into the first room, as suggested, always restart right away. Allows the player to practice way faster
• Speaking of difficulty, the game was too hard because:
  1. you have a LOT of weight, making you gain downward momentum at an insane rate. It makes it hard to control cause the spaces to move are really shallow. You could slightly decrease the gravity
  2. that momentum also influences on the hook, who doesn't reliably make you move up as long as you have downward momentum. You could slightly decrease your downward momentum to make it more reliable for the hook
  3. and when you gain upward momentum, if you ever hit the ceiling, you lose the hook, which makes you fall at a great speed because of the gravity. You could allow the player to stay hooked to the ceiling at least a bit longer.

So the overall game feels too fast, which doesn't seem to be appropriate for the way this hook works, especially in such small rooms. You hit the ceiling too easily, thus leaving you a very small window to reuse the hook... but by the time you use it, you gain too much speed downward and considering you don't have enough space, you eventually hit the spikes. Just making all of these even slightly (which wouldn't alter the game that much) would help a lot difficulty wise. It is generally better to have the level design make the difficulty rather than the controls.

• The level design is not bad on its own by the way, it just doesn't feel to match the mechanics
• I find this use of the theme to lack a bit of originality in the sense that precision platformers that have you restart are very common (especially this jam, as you can imagine) I liked Surg's approach with Test Loop on that regard
• That said, visuals and sounds fit very well, with a downwell style. pretty cool!

So so so difficult! I must have retried around 30+ more times, and the best I got was just 3 cyrstals! I just couldn't get past the rotating spiked balls, which after a while I was getting frustrated because I really want to see the end!

The game is very highly polished, the art style very cute! I love the 3 colours and how you used them!

The music is perfect for the game, the sound effects very crunchy, overall a very solid submission on GM48!

I think the only thing I would change is the difficulty, or at least ramp it up a bit slower, I felt it shot up to high for me personally, and I adore hard games.

I'm not giving up, but I will come back to this game!

I really, REALLY liked the way you implemented the fullscreen, sound mute and music mute buttons. I once clipped horizontally into a wall in the narrow tunnel in the very bottom left corner of the room.

Really juicy and well-presented!

Since it's so hard, I would have quicker restarts (maybe even respawn at the start of the room).

Fun and tough but with the perfect blend of both. Some of the gem placements can require quick reactions and give it a nice challenge

The art and sounds were spot for it.

The mechanics were great I especially liked how the player picks up momentum when falling I died a few times with getting greedy with some of the gems this way.

Amazing game... I was terrible at it but the game was super super nice

I absolutely loved this even though I was rubbish at playing it =) Very cool!

Had a ton of fun with this, but it kicked my ass. It'd be cool to see a post jam version for mobile with randomly generated levels!

Super cool game with great art and sound. Very hard but simple and intuitive. Played through it a couple of times. Would recommend to other people, and would be great as an app.