Bouncy Cat

If you like platformers with deep movement mechanics, I recommend. It's a neat little game. That's the TL;DR. This game's biggest strength is that it makes the act of simply moving your character from place to place, regardless of the environment, something to be mastered. It's simple and intuitive - you bounce - but there are a couple of very significant ways you can modify it. First is the relationship between the three states your cat can be in, I'll call them bounce mode, control mode and speed/weight mode. Bounce mode is self-explanatory, you will bounce as you touch any surface. Control mode is the normal state, and it's where you're able to adjust the most while switching between the two other states. If there was a slight miscalculation, using this mode allows you to correct it before it's too late. Then there's speed mode, which I think is the crux for the great learning curve. It makes you small, makes you go very quickly (especially down slopes), but it also makes you plummet from the air very quickly. It effectively turns you into a ball-shaped anchor, which means that it can be quite volatile. This is the hardest thing in the game to master by my estimation (outside of maybe consecutive wall-bounces), it's essential to playing quickly but can be a very risky maneuver. Learning the intricacies of how to weave the speed mode into many of your bounces can be tough and frustrating, but it's rewarding to do so. One of the most fun parts of the game for me has been the tried and true act of simply jumping across some platforms that are placed out sparsely. There's a lot to consider in the moment-to-moment even for such a fundamental platforming concept, as if you want to go fast, then plummeting down onto platforms with speed mode just before you bounce off of them is essential, but quite risky, since you may just miss them entirely. One really needs to learn the trajectories of the modes. Secondly, the environments will inevitably shift the way you approach the movement. Some levels make you utilize speed mode to gain momentum to launch yourself somewhere far, others force you to be wary of environmental hazards, and others yet will make you have to learn the skill of wall-bouncing, which is another very high-skill ceiling action. Many of the levels are pretty rudimentary platforming concepts, but paired with the movement system they present new challenges. The extremely common trope of moving platforms is one of the hardest levels in this game. They only show up about 70% of the way through the game, whereas in most platformers you'll likely see them within the first few levels. The game also has environmental modifiers like ice and water which shift the way your modes function a bit. Ice makes you go extremely fast in speed mode but with less control, and water retains the normal functions of the modes but you're obviously floatier; it's water. They don't show up super often but it's a nice change of pace now and then. These two things together make for a remarkably deep movement system. You'll have to frequently adjust based on the level and your knowledge of the systems. For criticisms, it can be unpolished at times. At a few points you might tumble out of the level and fall into the endless void. It does not happen often, and even if it does, the restart is instant so at most you're losing like, 30 seconds. Collision boxes for enemies/some obstacles can be unclear and typically a bit too big (seems to just be a big rectangle usually, which can lead to the models being a little bit off naturally), which is understandable for a game made by 1 person. The same goes for the lack of visual effects that could help with clarity. There are some weaker levels. They're presumably there for the sake of exploring the concept thoroughly, and I'd say the game as a whole does a good job of that, but that ambition tends to leave some levels with the short straw. All-in-all, a unique platformer with a lot of mechanical depth. Quite liked it by the time I finished it.