It's quite nice to see a theoretical application of the game jam's theme! I could totally notice some major influences from games such as Celeste too (and do love me some queer representation in media <3). My review here will be sectioned into two major parts since I have a fair bit to say (both good and bad!):
- The Gameplay
- The Story
1 - The Gameplay
Not to start of negative, but I found some parts of it to be a bit underbaked. To start of positive, I quite liked the variance of enemies. They all felt unique and had different ways of overcoming them. For example, I found that baiting ghosts over and then jumping past them was the best way to avoid getting hit rather than trying to keep out of their sight. The scarecrow enemies felt a little mean, getting hit by them meant almost certain death thanks to the insta-kill spikes. My suggestion would be to make the spikes just take a certain percentage of health off then bounce you back onto the nearest platform.
The biggest downside in gameplay were the controls. They felt... sluggish. It was difficult to control the character at times, which is a fine method to go down but I felt that with some of the platforming, finer control was needed to avoid falling off a significant amount of time although I did eventually get used to it, I am concerned that people who are worse at platformers than me might be turned away by the controls before they get to enjoy the best part of the game - the story!
2 - The Story
The story was a treat! While a bit corny and cliche at times, I never felt as if it brought anything too egregious into the picture, which is especially important when handling sensitive subjects. As someone with loved ones who are suffering or have suffered from loss and addiction before, I noticed some subtle hints of things that you as a relative of those suffering have to endure. Even things as simple as a loud TV keeping you up at night (as I noticed during the prologue <3). Although it's justified thanks to the short development timeframe of a game jam, I felt as if the ending was a little rushed. It's not super natural for someone so deep in grief and addiction to overcome it and accept help instantly, but I can certainly suspend belief and let it pass because of the aforementioned justification.
Last Notes
I think some of the audio could've been mixed a bit better. The coin SFX when collecting long lines wasn't exactly fun, and it would've been nice to have different songs for each level (but that's more of a minor gripe than a major issue!). Overall, I quite enjoyed this game, and would totally play a release with improved and extended gameplay & story!
P.S. - I found a bug where I would get infinitely juggled by a ghost! Should look into that if you plan to do a post-jam patch.