I hopped in without a glance at the controls, which were unconventionally elegant. I like the choice to put jumping on W rather than the Spacebar, and Period for dashing. On the third level, I seemed to have jumped over the exit gate and into the pits of darkness with no way to refund my parchment. And so restarting, I had a beat of preparation with both hands on the keyboard before I realized that the UI requires mouse input. I kept forgetting that the gate structure at the bottom of most levels is a platform and not a background element, trying instead to jump over the "gap," which seems like a feasible challenge with the distance afforded by the dash ability.
The game has a boxy affair with the Land genre; features and their quality of distinction accumulate in the adventure, but the most enlivening application of one of those features is saved for the ending. Had the bamboo stalks been programmed to be climbable on either side, there could have been a maze of them with no other platforms to rely on, creating a distinction for the features instead of just with the features. The "snowy freckles" were only an alleged feature put too far out of my way in a Nerve-focused scenario of escaping the ink blot; my curiosity did bring me out of my way to try and discern what it did, but this ran counter to what I "should've" been feeling in that moment, which was to run away and dodge the obstacles, not run straight into them.
The 3d debut of Sonic introduced a new form of movement in the homing attack, however its functionality did and always would feel like a concession for a game that wants to replicate the most skillful moments of the past. Jumping midair from one enemy to the next in 2d feels really satisfying and precarious, but it's easy to see how the game becomes so precarious as to be unwieldy if they had expected the player to do the same thing in 3d. The movement here is basically identical to a homing attack; it may feel better than Sonic due to having a narrower range of level, but in essence it accomplishes about as little of its own work in the overall design; it begins to feel like a means to an end. I think there's more precedence than people realize for a game like Doodle Jump to make a cultural comeback a la Bejeweled/Candy Crush. I see...The Rabbit's Scroll was the blueprint...on it boss. o7