great writing, fun voice acting, really cute pixel art! no notes on any of that.

the first act gameplay is really nice, however the second act really feels unpolished and "just there for added runtime", my list of annoyances with it are as follows:
• no buffer for dash attacks, extremely hard to time for speed
• why does running also attack, that's an entirely separate action?
• holding movement after a dash-attack slows you down, game becomes about momentum conservation from attacks
• sometimes i don't get my jump back after dash-attacking an enemy?
• attacking while jumping on an enemy's head feels like it has a 50/50 chance of jumping vs. killing them, it's probably not but it makes it really hard to plan a jump after that, since in one case you have to hold jump and the other you have to press afterwards
• the dash-attacks have no buffering on them which makes it really hard to hit them quickly (e.g. dash → jump)
• is the down+run groundpound ever tutorialized? i got stuck at 6-7 for ~20 minutes since i didn't know that you could even do that action (once again, why does running attack??)
• i feel like the levels should probably have more differences between acts, maybe like different routes with rooms unique to each

and a few more minor general notes:
• pausing doesn't work after death, makes restarting confusing
• probably just me being bad, but the checkpoints are a bit too far apart in the later levels, especially during act 2 where you're going super fast and die in one hit
• definitely just a me issue, but i'm not a fan of playing as kiri smoking, i understand this game likes representation but that probably isn't a good thing to represent…

despite other people's complaints, i find the floatiness of the controls to not be an issue, just something to get used to. overall it's a pretty fun game, and definitely worth playing (especially if you're better at video games than i am)