Some more feedback from someone within the industry

Preface: In an effort to remain transparent in the development of this game, I will respond to feedback provided by players in devlogs tagged with the Game Design post type.

I was fortunate enough to get someone working within the games industry to play and provide feedback on what I've made so far

Nice job man. Nice and clear level design, The levels lead the player where to go. Nice camera cuts and checkpoints!. Fire vfx looks cool!
Some feedback:

• More jump control e.g. short jump and high jump. If I tap space, do a small jump (stop adding force/velocity on keyrelease), if I hold down the highest jump.
• Same with WASD controls. Just so I can add as much or as little adjustment.
• It would be nice to strafe with A & D and control camera with the mouse.
• The player jump feels quite floaty, especially falling back to earth (play with mass and gravity maybe)?
• When on the wheel platform it's not that smooth - is it updating in FixedUpdate?
• A little audio goes a long way even, if it's on the jumps and lands.

To respond to this:

Thank you! I'm really happy with how the fire VFX turned out, it's such a simple implementation but looks so sweet! I've tried making it so that the player isn't punished for messing up too bad, as the game is inherently quite challenging.

I've considered adding more control over the movement, though I'm not quite sure how I could implement this without messing with the theme of having limited movement in the air. I suppose I could add some form of diminishing returns in the change in direction. Adding variable jumps definitely seems interesting and could make for some interesting jumping puzzles where you have to mix and match jump heights in some of the new areas I'm currently planning out.

Adding variable force to the movement is also an interesting suggestion. At the moment the movement in the air is slightly more effective than on the ground (I think it's around 7.5 units/second in the air and 6 u/s on the ground). I've just thought of the idea of while you're holding down the button to adjust your movement, you are slowed down considerably (you won't fall as far and your movement on the XZ plane is also reduced) while you "charge" the movement. Once you release, or you reach the max force (plus some grace time) you will burst (see where the name comes from?) forward at speed.

Strafing was something mentioned in my last response to some feedback. Having it so that you can turn in the air allows for the movement in the air to feel less restrictive, but in the next update I push out, it'll be possible to use your available movement in the air to strafe using Q/E.

Adjusting the gravity might make it so that some platforms will have to be moved closer to eachother and heights will have to be adjusted. Currently jumping sets your vertical velocity to a fixed amount, and gravity (-9.81 per second) is added over time to your Y velocity. (Feels like I'm waffling here, does that make sense?)

I'm not really sure what's happening with the rotating platforms. I've tried adding velocity to the player based on the how far the platform has moved in the last frame but it's not as smooth as I'd like. I'm still trying to fix this but the built-in character controller is a little weird.

I actually looked at some audio tools this morning to implement into the game. Trying to pick some ambient music and fun sound effects which fit the game but nothing is set in stone yet!