I feel a bit embarrassed to have died as much as I did in overestimating how fast I could go, both in the sense of reviews and the games. I found myself running too quickly off a ledge expecting a coyote jump and falling directly into six inch spike pits, and the maneuver for jumping into a wall rather than onto one was quite tricky due to the different sliding speeds in either case. The detail of statistics at the ending reflects the attention to those details broadly, as an explicit motivation to observe and internalize how they work for a better score.
The game is a Nerve based jaunt through a spiky cave, with as many platforms as necessary to take the name of "platformer." Sarcasm aside- although the central mechanic lies rather flatly, it's clear that polish and presentation took precedence over game design and perhaps to a much more intentional and commendable degree than the curriculum's mandate. Placing an abundance of cookies may have turned into a frustrating question without an answer, but placing just one provides me a perfect semiotic balance between idea and reality; whatever kind of game design was buried as a result ultimately functions better as an exclusion. There may yet have been some opportunities for polish with what remains, namely typical qualities of life such as the aforementioned coyote jump.
New Super Mario Bros actually designing intention into their "fifth player platform" mechanic is a space still ripe for exploration, since it was delegated to an auxiliary feature that was basically not meant to be used skillfully. When that level of skill is presented to the game, the player's abilities are quite astounding to see as they skip and hop over the majority of obstacles, solely interacting with the created platforms. Seeing as Mario and several others have locked down the cultural current of platformers for decades now, looking for his boundaries and going beyond them is a simple way to invigorate the artistry of the genre.