My first impression was that the game reminded me a lot of the legendary old Flash game N (The Way of the Ninja) — in a good way.

I liked the trailing lines in the background. It's a nice visual effect. The music is also pretty good.

The Z/X controls felt terrible at first, but once I realized I could use the arrow keys for movement, things started to make more sense.

One thing that felt a bit illogical was that doors I'd already opened in a level would close again after I died. I expected them to stay open.

Overall, I enjoyed the game, but I don't think this genre is really for me. The gameplay requires fairly precise timing and coordination, which I struggled with. For example, I couldn't always use dashes or double jumps while sliding down walls (or maybe I'd already used them before reaching that point — I'm not entirely sure).

I understand that these limitations might be intentional and make sense from a game design perspective, but they made the game quite challenging for someone like me who isn't particularly experienced with this type of platformer.

Anyway, good luck with the game!

Here are some stream-of-consciousness notes I took while playing Wheevil. So they are mostly in gameplay order:

• Why introduce Z as jump when spacebar also works? Spacebar felt more natural to me.
• Perhaps add slight drag once you reach the top after a hug-jump-climb sequence. Feels too easy to overshoot once you reach the top.
• Trajectory history visualization is neat.
• Digging the music.
• Feels a tad floaty when running back and forth on a flat surface.
• Press ‘m’ to close the map? Seems like any key press should close the map, unless the keys are used for something else later on?
• Pacing: There is a lot of upfront tutorial work. Perhaps pace it out with some regular levels in between concepts?
• Did you consider double-tap for dash?
• When I press dash without an arrow, I’d rather my guy not dash (or have a window where it waits for a direction key).
• I really like the swinging.
• I’m pretty sure I’m pressing ‘c’ within the swing radius, and often it doesn’t do anything. (The Timing Is Key level was a major violator.)
• In the Timing Is Key level, the timing constraint felt too tight. Or it’s unclear when I have to latch. A lot of trial and error.
• For an inexperienced person like me, I think adding a little airtime at the end of a jump to coordinate a move could help a lot with combo work.
• The up-dashes are killing me. I keep wanting to hit X first, then up, but then dash pushes me left/right. Adding some time checks or multi-key input would help.
• The forest level with the short ledge and long ledge above was fairly difficult.
• I’m liking the map screen as the game progresses, but I also wonder if it’s needed? At some point, will I need to reference it to navigate somewhere? Still, it’s nice to have an overview.

I really liked this game and think it could be a ton of fun. The main thing that got in my way was the unforgiving controls. For a casual like me, precision requirements are definitely a barrier. Yet, despite the difficulty I had in certain parts, I played for longer than I expected. In fact, I was initially just going to sample the game and not actually play, but I kept going and wanted to give some feedback. Great start.