reSTASIS

I thought this was a pretty good game. I had some issues, but many of them are minor. I'll start with those.

• It looks like the tutorial pop-ups have dedicated trigger locations for when they disappear, so if you accidentally retrigger a tutorial pop-up and then restart at a future checkpoint, the pop-up will remain in the corner of the screen until something else happens.
• Some areas are a bit poorly lit/difficult to differentiate. I fell off a platform assuming it was continuous once or twice.
• Is the player collider a capsule? This one isn't really an issue, but I managed to hover over an edge in a weird way once if I was really careful.
• Using Q to quick turn turns the camera over the course of a short animation. This on its own is fine, but if you jump before the camera is finished turning, since walljumps are based on camera directions you can end up jumping into the void by playing too fast. I feel like the experience here could be a bit more smooth with an internal virtual camera angle which immediately snaps to the new direction or something.
• When you restart from a checkpoint, the camera angle isn't reset but remains whatever direction you were facing when you failed. This means I can be facing an entirely random angle when I respawn, which is slightly disorienting.
• When you restart, the level's cycle doesn't restart with you.
• There isn't really a visual indicator of where a checkpoint is, just that you have reached one.
• Since you only move forward or backwards at a relatively high speed, and the speed is constant, the time control power felt somewhat imprecise. I occasionally overshot the cycle for some platforms, which was a little annoying to correct for.
• I couldn't find any decryption key for the fourth level. It seems way more hidden than the rest.

Now for the more major issues. First of all, it's ridiculously easy to overshoot a jump. There's very little I can do to control jump strength. While I thought it was fine to fall multiple times in the tutorial, where I was getting used to the mechanics, it really bogged down the route to the decryption key in the second level. One walljump on the path is bone-crushingly strict, but possible. However, it's so unreliable that I resorted to attempting to walljump a second time on the edge of the target platform. This platform has very little vertical size, and as a result of the programming, the window which I am able to walljump against the platform is very thin. I ended up spamming space, but because of how small the timing window is I ended up falling off half the time and needing to go back to the platform from the checkpoint to try again. However, when I did succeed, because the target platform is so tiny I risked immediately overshooting it and falling off. My immediate reaction whenever I got to this point was to dash backwards to correct, but this almost always resulted in me overshooting in the other direction instead. This decryption key ended up, by well over a mile, the most difficult part of the game and it did not feel like it was because of an issue on my part.

In general, it feels like the level design does not cooperate with the game mechanics; While the second decryption key was bone-crushingly hard, I could fly through other parts of the game without considering the intended route because of how much distance I could cover with just a jump and a dash. It felt like the levels often didn't consider that I could ignore the challenges in them.

The mechanics for controlling time were promising, but it often felt like it wasn't truly asking me to use those abilities because it was simple enough to complete many sections without them. In some cases, it felt like the game was actively avoiding asking me to pause time. To reach the decryption key in the third level, I had to use momentum I could not gain while time was paused. In a way, it felt like the game was teaching me the downside of pausing time (that it doesn't allow you to gain momentum) but it was never asking me to truly figure out the advantages. There are other cases where the time pausing is very useful, like in situations where there is a combination of many moving platforms and jumping between them without pausing time would be difficult, but this felt a bit like an exception at times. A big reason for this is the earlier issue with level design; Often where it seems like using the time pausing or time controlling mechanics would come in useful, it is easier to just skip the challenge by jumping to the next platform.

The time control ability felt a bit artificial. It's like, "now that you have it, here are some levels where you have to do a lot of waiting! Wouldn't it be useful to not wait?" I wish there were challenges that involved more creative use of the time control power.

I think it's interesting that the only real fail state is falling off the level; there are no spikes or deadly pits or anything. I wonder what the tradeoffs of that choice have been. 

The aesthetic is very nice! A bit difficult for me, but the movement gameplay is fun to mess around with.

was good 👍

the atmosphere was really good and your art works very nicely with zld's music, the learning curve was very smooth giving just the right amount of time to learn a new mechanic before applying to more complex puzzles, the checkpoints are also well placed and i never felt frustrated after falling during a jump sequence because i knew i wouldnt lose absurd amounts of progress

Cool demo, I like first person platforming and this was a neat take on it. Interested to see more done with the time mechanics in the full game, felt like it was just starting to get to some cool stuff with that towards the end of the demo. Keyboard and mouse controls could use a bit of polish for the full release but the feel of the actual gameplay is really good. Neat visual style as well. Looking forward to more of this!

Really like this!! Feels really tight and fast, with only a small change that could be made to let you control the rewind with the mouse wheel!! Excited to see where it goes!!

really amazing. the controls are phenomenal and the music is great. i loved scaling huge walls by pivoting midair with walljumps, i only wish there were more secrets!!!

Very cool game. I liked chaining walljumps together to skip chunks of the level, it was neat.