Visually super impressive. Fantastic animation. The mechanics themselves are interesting, but something about the whole experience feels very unsatisfying. It just might be because of how zoomed out it is. It's probably easily  fixable with more time. I enjoyed it overall.

I will update this review if I have time at the end. I want to play more of the games that still need to get over the median.

Loved to see another implementation of the “one screen” idea! The art style is very unique and detailed. Personally, the dark environments with brighter characters are quite easy to read, and together with the sporadic music, they make for a truly bizarre and haunting experience. The main character is very cool and extremely well-animated, and the little cutscenes when collecting powerups and at the end really give her a lot of personality.

The array of powerups and items is quite impressive and creative. The switching mechanic took some getting used to, but all the abilities feel fun and satisfying to use. The star ability was my favorite, being simple and effective to use, and I also loved the ability to find hidden objects by zooming in - it really added a lot to the feeling of discovery. However, I think the base jump could be a teeny bit higher, as it feels like you can just barely make the 2-tile-high jumps that are expected of you. 

Shooting and deflecting is also nice and has a great sense of feedback, though the enemies do take a while to put to sleep. Combined with the fact they wake up eventually, it often feels like it’s better to just run past them. On the other hand, I certainly appreciate the ability to slow down bullets, as it helps even players with skill issue (me) pull off the deflections!

The map is fun to explore and has a truly impressive amount of content and secrets packed into a single screen. It does lead to the issue where it’s hard to see things at the farthest zoom level, while the closest zoom is a bit too close. The UI being part of the map itself rather than its own screen layer was also a bit confusing at first - it took me a while to find the health bar, and I initially thought the matchbox icon was an item in the level.

That said, it was awesome to see so many secrets and optional interactions. All the unique NPCs really make the game world feel alive, and finding and talking to all of them was definitely the best part of the game for me. The stalker interaction and the camera “powerup” were absolutely hilarious, and some of my other favorites were the witch and the construct (definitely a very relatable NPC…).

Overall, definitely a top contender for me among the entries I've reviewed so far. A very polished and atmospheric game that captures that dreamlike vibe perfectly, and a great idea and interpretation of the theme (and I’m 100% not being biased saying that)!

Enjoyment 4/5: while I really loved the way the game felt and especially loved the shooting ability with the deflection, the lack of coyote time made platforming very frustrating and very unforgiving.

Execution 4/5: the game is very well made, just a little rough around the edges.

Sensory 4/5: the atmosphere and visual style is just simply perfect, and the eerie rumbling ambience uplifts it to a whole new level. The only problem was the game being zoomed out so much made it hard to enjoy these things.

Metroidvania 5/5: classic metroidvania things. You're left to your own devices and there's gates with ability requirements and all that good stuff.

Relevance 5/5: the whole thing is in one screen. What more is there to say?

This game has a cool aesthetic and an interesting gimmick. The different projectiles corresponding to the different abilities looked quite nice, and the enemies and little friendly creatures/NPCs scattered about were pretty cute. However, the game being zoomed out almost all the time made it hard to appreciate all that. I had to play in fullscreen simply so I didn't strain my eyes as much. Also, it's sometimes hard to tell dark tiles apart from the background. Maybe making the background a bit darker could help with contrast.

All that being said, the metroidvania/exploration aspect of this game was pretty fun. Progression felt relatively loose, but never to the point where it was too hard for me to figure out where to go next. And judging by the pause menu, there seems to be a few items I missed, which is cool. Although, there was a weird moment where I managed to get the "Sundance" ability without obtaining the dash first, which resulted in me being stuck in the room where you get it, forcing me to respawn back at the start.

I also liked how the zoom ability you get later on lets you see things that you otherwise wouldn't see. You can even see extra little details, like how the player character's eyes turn yellow when using the star ability. It does feel like it should be something you have from the beginning though, especially due to visual strain I mentioned earlier.

The music is... certainly minimal. There's very little of it, and the little that is there is rather discordant. It's not exactly listening material, but I suppose it does have an uncanny vibe that befits the game. 

There not being a sound when taking damage felt weird and made it hard to tell at first what was going on.

Being able to gain height by deflecting your own projectiles was pretty cool. It's what I used to get the Sundance ability early. I also thought it was kinda neat how you have to deflect the projectile to switch abilities, although admittedly it was a little inconvenient at times. 

The projectile also felt kinda weak vs enemies. Feels like the enemy health should be reduced a bit, or maybe give the projectile a damage increase for each projectile ability you have, instead of just with the star.

The game overall was pretty fun (but maybe a little jank), only major issue was the zoom thing.

Amazing sensory rating. Shame that we can't really observe the assets more closely. Speaking of which, I'd say a metroidvania in a single screen is an amazing concept and I fully cheer, unfortunately in practice it gets weaker. It's sometimes hard to distinguish elements on the screen, especially with everything being in essentially the same tones. Add to this the platforming phases of the games and it can quickly get frustrating, since it's hard to make precise calculations based on the limited visual info you have. Apart from that though, I give all points on everything else, you did a great job.

Really cool aesthetic and some neat ideas with the changeable shot speed and recoil based platforming, but I found the game just too finicky to get very far. A lot of it was just how damage was handled, having no feedback or iframes on hit often left me low on health from enemies without even realizing what had happened and the spikes working by just trapping you inside them while they slowly ate at your health was not fun. I also felt like the single screen idea was more detrimental than anything with the current implementation, it made it extra hard to tell what was going on since everything was so small on the screen and it never really gave me the feeling of "playing on the map" that you say you were going for. I feel like the game would've been much more playable zoomed in a little since I'd be able to get a lot more precision in my positioning just from being able to see a little clearer.

An interesting entry! I loved the idea to have the whole metroidvania on one screen. The art style and overall tone was well done. The ability to immediately warp back to the center at any point made backtracking a lot less tedious (and also possible at a few points) than it could've been.

I think the most immediate issue I had was a lot of the platforming ended up feeling frustrating, in particular any time I missed a jump and was just stuck inside of the grabby hands until I died. Not sure if that was a bug, but it definitely was the cause of the majority of my deaths. I don't think this game has coyote time but it felt like it definitely could've used it given how many jumps I tried to make and just didn't happen, leading to me falling into a pit immediately after.

The ability cycling by parrying the bullet is a unique idea, but in practice ended up feeling tedious when I saw where I needed to go and knew I'd just have to spend several seconds cycling through existing abilities to get the correct one to pass. The actual powers themselves were pretty cool, though.

Early on after I first got the starstruck ability, I think I somehow died during the getting powerup sequence, which led to me being stuck in that state when I respawned. I ended up needing to quit and restart.

I did end up finishing the game, and I think the game is pretty good! It just could use a little more polishing in a few places.