This game is a rough diamond, there is a lot of potential. 5 different characters, all with an unique orthodox moveset. They nailed the controls here, it's a mix of the funniest traversial options plattformers offered across the ages of momentum based plattformers, tied to each single character.
You have swing hooks with the frog, bouncy wall jumps, with the kangaroo, Spin Dashs with the Armadillo, Spider Climbing with the Panda and generally Air Movement with the Pelican.
Since you can swap immediately between 2 of the animals in designated passages across the 30 Levels of the game, there is an interesting combination of these movement options possible. Each stage consists of dozens of "gears", these gears change their apperance in context of the animal you interact with. They become grappling spots for the frog, plattforms/walls for the kangaroo, barrel cannons for the Armadillo and so on.
In that manner you can for example swing at an gear, take the upward momentum and then change to the armadillo to catapult you above.
The leveldesign forces such quirks constantly.
Unfortunelately the leveldesign can be hit or miss. While I love the controls, there are some of the most confusing levels I encountered yet in such an game.
Moonlight Mountains for example is a mess of an level with a lot of pointless gears leading to nowhere and a lots of "waiting" passages between badly placed checkpoints.
There are extra "hard levels" but they were designed very sloppy, it seems like quality assurance was lowest here. Especially if you wanna collect everything all the satisyfing upholding of the momentum comes suddenly to an halt. I think there is way too much emphasis on collecting things in levels where the camera has to scroll on both Axis, in this manner you constantly slow down because you wanna make really sure you found everything.
It doesn't help that the game will frequently push you forward by suddenly closing doors behind you activating traps or not making clear which way leads to the main path again. There are certainly games who handled it worse. (looking at you Crash 4) but it leads to downplaying the biggest strengths of the game.
Also lots of animations could be more fluid, especially on bosses, signposting a bit better, there were enough moments when suddenly things happend I couldn't forsee. Again the "hard levels" are the biggest offender here, especially the one in the Ice World where the lava rises. In this level sometimes Walls just don't break although you spin dash against them. There is a confusing change of rules that kinda leaved me bamboozled how to navigate in this level fast enough, since the the armadillo now can rise with the lava. for some reason.
In the end I think it's too much of an hazzle getting 100% in the game, there are "hidden animal switches" where you play the same level again just with a different combination of animals. It doesn't change too much of your approach in most cases and simply isn't an engaging way to stretch the content with yet another collectible.
Even for the bossfights the game wants you to collect blue orbs, so instead concentrating on the boss you're more concerned getting all the orbs which also are tied to enemies that despawn after a short time. It's really annyoing and makes the fights less satisying.
So yeah it's kinda pity that the direction of this game is in its own way and distracts from the actual marvelous movement. I think if you are a speedrunner you will feel right at home. If you don't give too much about notoriously collecting everything, its enjoyable as well, but there are too much annoying or just downright boring levels that hinder the game to reach its full potential.
Anyway all in all I still think it's worth a thumbs up, simply for how entertaining my first playhours were.
