It's not great as a music video.

The environment you're flying through is very brightly lit, and together with the low resolution, it makes the scene almost painful to look at.
Around 1:45, you go underwater, and that looks quite off, because this is not the kind of water which looks good up close or from underneath.

The relaxing music is brought down by what I assume was meant to represent ocean waves, but in effect is just static noise.

It's extraordinary that this is stop-motion, and really overall quite creative.

However, there are also so many cuts and background changes and splashes of colour happening very fast, so you don't really have time to take most things in to follow the action or enjoy it.

And it works, since now I'm going to follow you because of a shitpost with pretty, fluid animation.

Nevertheless, it's really well-made (especially the bullet sequence is exceptional), creative and funny, and I'm looking forward to what an animation you *want* to be seen by someone will look like.

It's quite good, it's an enjoyable game. I especially liked how you can clearly notice the difference when you upgrade your exosuit; it's not just a cosmetic change or minor stat increase. Collecting a ton of XP and seeing the bar animate across several levels was also nice, at the level progression and introducing tougher enemies felt just right.

My main gripe was with entering and leaving the base. You run to the base, to enter you need to press 'V' and 'Enter garage' (meanwhile enemies pile up) and then leave – however, later in the game I almost always died when leaving because I reappeared in the middle of a crowd of enemies.
You should think about ways to make entering/leaving less frustrating (e.g. kill everything in a small radius around you when leaving, teleport to a completely different place, or limit how often you can enter + have safe zone around, or don't have the base at all and add an upgrade screen you can access anywhere).

I don't know why I need to press a separate button to pick items (when moving with WASD and shooting, pressing 'C' means you have to stop moving all the time to grab something).
Couldn't you pick items automatically? Or is there a benefit to *not* picking an item you encounter?

Inside the building, I encountered a couple of bugs. The exosuit was invisible (I only saw the frontal cannons), and enemies were getting pushed through walls as I shot then (which made it quite tedious to finish them off, as I had to run around to different rooms after a shot or two).

Around the screen edges, XP (and enemies sometimes) tended to accumulate out-of-bounds, taunting you but you couldn't pick the XP up as it was out of the range of the magnet.

Thinking about it, I wish there was at least fullscreen mode, because the screen displays so much information there's not enough space for the actual gameplay which feels small and not clear enough (everything in the actual game has a similar colour and blends with the environment, so the more colorful UI also takes away your attention).
It's said by UI designers players can mentally track like about 7 pieces of information at the same time until they start ignoring parts of what you display. Here with all the onscreen numbers – ammo count, material count, wave information, health, minimap, XP and level, collected XP numbers, damage numbers, kill streak… it feels quite crowded.

This is seriously awesome, and a lot of fun! I have nothing but praise.
I kept thinking of various possible improvements, “I wonder if he thought of…” – and yep, you did, every time.

== Gameplay

The gameplay itself is great. A ton of variety, there are several ways to obtain a keycard and progress that are selected randomly. It's always very clearly presented so you're never struggling to figure out what to do to progress. The individual objectives vary greatly in terms from what's required from you, such as “kill enemy”, “destroy stationary objects” but also “platforming with disabled ladders and jump pads” or “rescuing hostages”.
It keeps you on your toes as to what the next crazy thing the objective is going to ask of you.

Around level 7, I started getting the hang of the game and thinking I may have seen it all and now only the level layout will change… and lo and behold, lava.
It seems it went quite fast (not sure if it just stops rising at some point), but I managed to complete the two penultimate levels in time by dropping to the top of the door and grazing the lava a couple of times, so the timer isn't overly strict, which is good.

I really hoped the finale would have something unique… and of course it did, and I loved it.

Masterful work with the game feel, too, all the little impacts, gentle screen shakes, colourful animated text, particle effects and so on.

At first, I struggled to time my shots right when I wanted to kill someone with a gun, and wondered if there was a way to recover health if I'm running low… but soon you'll learn to time your jumps right, and health ultimately isn't as important because the levels don't last as long.

Tape 6 often kept spawning interactable items or high-profile targets underneath the left trampoline, collecting them tended to slow down the pace of the level a bit (since you need to leave the jump pad, but not fall to the pit). So that was the one hiccup in my view.

I'm not sure if you can get the same keycard event twice in a row. I think I saw that (two high-profile targets), but perhaps I simply stood close enough when the next objective spawned and completed it without realizing it.
Either way, it'd be best if you couldn't get the same thing twice in a row, but if it's allowed by any chance, it didn't seem like a widespread issue that could become a big deal.

You even have Newgrounds medals with ingame popups, too!

== Controls

Kudos for using the new input system (or some other smart solution) for controls.
Whenever a developer picks 'Z' as an important key, I always struggle as a Central European with QWERTZ layout (Z and Y swapped), here it seems to be based on the physical key location.
AZERTY users will probably be happy, too – and you can even rebind if that wasn't the case.

But you're still displaying 'Z' key even though I'm technically pressing 'Y' in my keyboard layout.

The arrow key information in Key Binds settings seems needlessly long, and results in tiny font size barely fitting into the button.
Consider just going “Up / Down / Left / Right” or perhaps try icons with actual arrows.

The game doesn't seem to have gamepad support; you could consider that to add the proverbial cherry to the perfect cake.
(At least I think it doesn't, with my Xbox One controller. Movement axis yes, other buttons nope.)

== Sounds and music

They perfectly fit the game.

At this point, let's also appreciate you crediting everyone whose sounds and assets you used, even though in some cases it technically wasn't required.

== Graphics and UI

Let's not forget to mention this.
I love the style, and how consistent everything is. Important objects are clearly highlighted, and impending doom is well-telegraphed. In the Settings, even hovering over the animated menu buttons is fun.

There's rain, a gentle parallax effect on the backgrounds and environments but you can easily distinguish important objects from the backgrounds. The player character has a faint glow around to make this even easier.

When you die, the restart message flashes at you, prompting you to have another go right away.

There are quality-of-life features, like displaying your best time when you retry a level.

The fullscreen button overlaps the keycard count. The other side of the screen seems free if you'd like to avoid this.

If you pause while you're on the game-over screen, the menu appears behind the semi-transparent fader.

== Closing thoughts

Did I mention I quite like the game? I think I did.

It's an amazing game, you've done a terrific job and can certainly be proud.

P.S.: Do you know about Pixel Day next week?
https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1541117
Since it's been published here and elsewhere before the event, it won't be eligible for the competition, but you can still get added visibility later with the “pixelday2025” tag.

The opening sequence is visually gorgeous. The main character and her animation, the lava and sparks, and the layered parallax background.

It almost feels like it's a cinematic intro to the game… however, it isn't, really. It's an introductory platforming section which would be okay in itself, but you're also being targeted by sentries quite likely to knock you out of a jump into lava towards instant death, quite soon after starting the game.
You're not very mobile mid-air, and since you occupy a third of the playable height of the screen with lava underneath, it's impossible to effectively dodge anything. The lava sparks are also the same colour as the projectiles harming you which can get lost among them if there's a lot going on.

This section mainly seems to want to get you comfortable with the controls, and teach you about attacking and blocking. But to achieve that, I don't think you need *that* many sentries.

---

The environments in the boss arena are (visually) very plain in comparison, but at least you clearly see what's going on. It was wise to scale the character down.

The combat itself felt a bit weird. Your only way to attack is to slightly graze the boss – by moving closer but not too close to avoid getting hurt. Since the boss is a lot faster than you, it's difficult to time it right. Sometimes you get slammed against a wall and hit multiple times, and it's quite frustrating to have to start from the very beginning of the game, not even from the start of the boss arena.

On the other hand, kudos for designing this many boss phases. That was pretty cool.

The boss phase with the splitting in four with the parts gradually starting shooting projectiles was conceptually the best part, at least to me. But in my experience, it took *an eternity* to get through. The boss is out of reach so you're bouncing the flying tiles towards him, but more than half the time you won't do it right so the tile stops just before the boss. And when you manage to pull the attack off, it knocks off like 1/20 of the total health.
I was in a hurry the morning and genuinely wondered if there was a way to pause the game somehow, because I was already maybe fifteen minutes into the phase and if I died or had to leave sooner, I definitely wouldn't care enough to replay the game from the very beginning again.

This phase is very good, it just mostly could be more lenient with deflecting the tiles and definitely shouldn't have as much health. I had the most trouble with performance during this phase, the game ran quite slowly up until the end of the boss fight.

The final phase felt a bit unnecessary because it seemed like you should have won already.

---

After leaving the boss arena, I understood I should be running away, but didn't know what was chasing me and I stopped midway to consider if I was perhaps meant to investigate first. Soon I saw the rolling rocks and managed to escape with a split second to spare. If I died there (either from the wall of doom or the lava) and was sent to the very beginning of the game after successfully beating the boss, I would be quite annoyed.

---

Overall, I believe the demo is nice, has interesting visuals, and the intro and epilogue almost have a cinematic feel to them. But it definitely could use checkpoints (at least entering the cave and leaving, perhaps after the boss splits, too) and better balancing at times (enemies around lava, length of boss phases).
The main mechanic is the attack/block which can also prolong your jumps. As a block and a poor-man's double jump it's awesome, but as an attack it's not very fun to use, but that's what you do for the majority of the game.

Hope that might be useful, and best of luck if you decide to continue development past the demo!

I love it, particularly the character's posture and expression. The contrast of the background with the burning barrel is nice, too. I think, in general, that the artwork is too blurry/smudgy, especially if I inspect the small details, like the objects in bottom right, or the towers in the top left. But overall, it's a really good picture of a post-apocalyptic scene.

Welcome to Newgrounds!

I can't even begin to describe how great this is. Seriously.
I can't take my eyes off Ness, the tent, Paula… you keep discovering more in every bit of it. Even though I like the game for various reasons, the main characters don't quite show emotions directly (with their permanent smiles). This takes the already impressive scene, fills all the missing pieces we couldn't imagine back then and presents it just beautifully.

If I ever looked for the definition of perfect, this would be it.

You know, they are all genuinely very nice drawings with interesting lore behind them, but in my opinion, the frame (and possibly the name) is distracting from it. It's a very sharp colour (and style) contrast from the rest of the drawing. Like here – the background is bluish, but the frame is vividly pink with flashy red/yellow name tag. Personally, I'd get rid of both (we can read the name in the title).