Escape the depths

I finally, finally beat it.  You did an awesome job in designing the platforming/puzzles on this game, which took some figuring out (particularly as it progressed).  Ultimately, mastering the platforming skills and nailing the timing with precision was the core challenge, however -- and it was very challenging.  In a good way!  I spent a lot of time on this game (more than the upper estimate), and my hat is off to you for creating a game with this much playtime.   You introduced the skills with very good pacing, and with great variety.  Allowing the change in key bindings was very helpful (I went with QWER for the non-jump buttons).  You made the player really practice the platforming to get it just right, and hitting long sequences felt very satisfying when I finally got them.  Great job!

Some feedback I hope is helpful:  the tradeoff to focusing on level design/mechanics and outsourcing the art is that it does give off an outsourced-art look.  The art styles and pixel sizes differ between different sprites, the character carries a sword she doesn't use, and it doesn't convey too much of a sense of place/character.  This made the experience one in abstract platforming for me, but you did the platforming very, very well, so it ultimately succeeded and was very fun.

In terms of mechanics, there was something with in-air dash-jump sequences that seemed a little unreliable to me (where the jump didn't happen) in crunch time, and I couldn't quite pinpoint why.  My suspicion was that perhaps (1) the dash mechanic pauses one's ability to jump for a short time (not the full extent of dash, something shorter), and/or (2) when one is too close to a floor or wall in the dash, some kind of ground-check code freezes the jump.   There were a few stages where I wondered why my jumps weren't working.

Separately, it felt to me at times that pushing a direction and dash at the same time (if the direction was opposite of the way the character was initially facing) resulted in a dash going the unintended direction; perhaps the code could give a touch more forgiveness if there is some slight disparity in whether dash or direction was pressed first?  Ultimately I adjusted to this by staggering my direction push and dash push.

And finally, the colliders on the spikes sometimes felt a bit oversized -- e.g., where one jumps alongside a wall that has spikes on top, one is "hit" by the spikes when one is beside them.  Similarly, the colliders felt like they reached up quite high above the spikes.

One last bit of feedback, for whatever it's worth, is that the platforming sequence shown in the image below was far and away the hardest  and most time-consuming for me.   I'm sure a large portion of my time playing this game was on that one sequence.  It was a very cool sequence, though.

Sorry for writing a book, but I appreciate the feedback I get from players, and I felt like the high quality of this game and the long time I spent on it deserved a fuller comment.  Awesome work!