Hello! I have played you game through a few times and I have some feedback for you! I will preface this with two things: 1) I have not read all the other comments, so if I repeat a point I apologize, and 2) I'm personally not very good at these speedrunny type games. I've tried Celeste a few times (Because, well... 🏳️⚧️) but I've never made it out of the hotel. Anyway, on to feedback!
- I thought the dialogue was funny! Good work there.
- I liked the part where the IRS acknowledged the Joker even pays his taxes.
- Gerald says 'Fly' at one point. I'm not sure if the joke is just that he's using outdated slang? That line felt a bit weird to me.
- The timer is the same color as the bulk of the platforms, meaning you can't see it sometimes if the level has any geometry over where it is. Didn't bother me too much because I wasn't trying for speed, but maybe giving it an outline would help?
- Additionally, feels bad that it doesn't stop during dialogue, especially since all the dialogue is unskippable and cannot be sped up.
- The movement feels really good and polished! Great job there!
- My only complaint here is that when playing without maximizing the screen I would click off the game window sometimes trying to launch or spin and lose focus of the game.
- Some of the level geometry felt a little unnecessary. Like, there were platforms you could get to but they were out of the way and there's no reason to go there. Could just be for visual interest, could be for speedrunning strats I don't understand, could be you plan to put collectables in later in those spots.
- Similarly, a couple of the crystal power-ups I ignored completely and got past the obstacles just fine. I imagine those are for speedrunning.
- At one point after failing a jump the level respawned me so far to the left of the screen I thought it didn't respawn me at all and the game was broken. I was mostly off the screen with like a pixel visible. I took a screenshot:
- I found the Z controls in your menu! I really appreciate having alternate control schemes, but it would be nice if what those controls are was listed somewhere. I figured it out by trial and error.
- The green slime part of the environment felt a bit underutilized. Probably just because of time constraints.
- Similarly, I think there was only one place outside of the tutorial where you have to deal with barriers?
- If you exit back to the main menu when the timer is running it persists on the screen, and does not reset if you restart level 1.
- Similarly, dialogue persists, and it seemed to break the tutorial going into it with dialogue from the main game still on screen.
- I took another screenshot of the dialogue and timer on the main menu:
- I wish my parents were as cool as Gerald's dad about job stuff when I turned 18.
- Also Gerald's dad says he has to "Get a job or pay taxes". It's an either/or in this universe?
- That would be cool.
- Also Gerald's dad says he has to "Get a job or pay taxes". It's an either/or in this universe?
Anyway, I think that's all I've got. I hope this comes off as constructive and not negative! I'm trying to help games improve! (And in this game's case, you literally asked me to comment on it in the Discord, 🤷♀️). Overall I thought this game was really polished and funny! Not my type of game exactly, but I think really fun for people who do like the speedrunning type stuff!
Have a wonderful day and good luck in the Jam!