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(+1)

This was a fun game, and absolutely incredible for your first full game project! Well done!! I have a lot of disparate thoughts and feedback, here they are in no particular order:

  • The tutorial levels are really good at explaining how each of the mechanics work, but I wish they took less time or were skippable on repeat playthroughs. It's a good 30-60 seconds per run gone on the same few screens.
  • I adore the cover art and palette choice for this one.
  • The ranking system is completely off. I got through 10-15 rooms on my second run without even fully understanding the game yet and I scored an S rank. I think this game could've really benefitted from the ranking requirements being clearer to the player, and also much more difficult, so that there's something to strive for once they've seen a few rooms and finished understanding the mechanics. As it is, there's nothing that asks a player who enjoyed the core mechanics and is looking for more to master the mechanics enough to continue playing, which is one of the key features of an endless game IMO.
  • It felt weird to have a sidescrolling platformer where you have no way to attack the enemies, but the more I play, the more I vibe with the choice. The human form's controls are on point, while cat form's extra mobility feels distinct enough to not invalidate or be invalidated by the human form, while being just versatile enough to not feel like an one-note gimmick.
  • The parallax backgrounds are peak.
(+1)

Thank you for enjoying the project and I am glad you liked it :p
 Also the feedback is very much noted, a lot of the same thing was being said about the rank system and I see that the way I implemented it was not the best of ways. For clarification the rank system takes the amount of gold collected and then divides it by the amount of rooms you have been through, so that is why the S comes earlier on if you die. I would love for more feedback on how something like this can be changed so it works best with the endless runner feel. But thank you for your feedback and I hope you enjoyed it :)

> But thank you for your feedback and I hope you enjoyed it :)

I definitely did, and I might come back for another playthrough depending on how busy I am :)

> For clarification the rank system takes the amount of gold collected and then divides it by the amount of rooms you have been through, so that is why the S comes earlier on if you die. I would love for more feedback on how something like this can be changed so it works best with the endless runner feel.

Yeah, that's one of those things that makes perfect sense on paper while completely falling apart in practise. It's a perfectly understandable decision to make in the time crunch of a game jam with so many other things to worry about which is why I don't hold it against the game at all, but since you asked, here's some more feedback. And just to preface what I'm about to say, most of my experience with ranking systems comes from playing a lot platformers and racing games that used them back in the day - there are a lot of other genres that implement these (rhythm, character action, etc) which I haven't actually played many of, nor have I played many endless runners, but hopefully what I'm about to say is general enough to apply.

The point of a ranking system is to motivate repeat playthroughs and encourage skill expression by showing the player that they could do better, and also as a benchmark for progression once the player decides they want to engage with said system. Some games base your rank off of your clear time, and these are games where going fast, controlling your character at speed and knowing the level layout are the entire point of the game - which is why the ranking system encourages this. Other games are more complicated, the early 3D Sonic games come to mind where you need to be fast, precise and thorough to be able to get enough base score, ring bonus and time bonus in one run to be able to get the A rank. In those games it's easy to run through a level carelessly and drop all your rings or go super slowly and scour the level without taking risk, that's why the ranking system only shows you the big rewards for doing what's hard.

So to figure out what ranking system would work for a game, just ask yourself what sort of gameplay you want to encourage. In this case I think it's pretty clear in the genre name - it's called an 'endless' runner for a reason. Progression should be the main component in determining your rank, because the whole point of an endless game is to see far can you get before you lose. IMO, doing the ranking backwards to what you have now - the number of rooms you've been through divided by the amount of gold missed (with a little bit of forgiveness for collecting almost-but-not-all of the gold) would have been an excellent starting off point that would just need a bit of tweaking to be a really satisfying system. It would punish dying early, as well as skimming through the levels while ignoring the mechanics or having to skip gold because you were too slow, which are both natural consequences of not having enough skill for this kind of game.

Hope this helps!