A Sonic.Exe Story Game

I first knew about this game from my discord, and it caught my attention because it was cancelled not due to lack of motivation, which is what you usually expect with these kinds of games, but rather because of the desire to make better.
basically I admired the self-awareness and dedication to making games that this community lacks, so I decided to play the game to be able to give you feedback on your future projects.

let's start with what the game does right:

• the characterization;
  it's common with fangame devs of this kind usually want to glaze their own sonic.exe, which results in them making the rest of the cast act incompetent as an attempt to highlight their own sonic.exe
  
  this game does not do this, surprisingly, all of the cast were in-character to their canon personalities

• following on the previous point
  alot of fangames attempt to get away with the mischaracterization by saying that it's an AU as a justification, forgetting that they should establish the new personalities if that was the case.
  
  this game, Sally is a new character different from her Archie comics counterpart, and instead of expecting me to roll with it, the game puts the effort to establish the difference by providing an interaction between her and sonic that makes the differences clear.

moving on to where the game misses. while the story gets alot of praise for me, the gameplay, sadly, won't be getting the same:

• the level design;
  the game uses the boost gameplay, while that isn't necessarily a bad thing, the level design is extremely crammed, to the point where i fear to boost out of the stage or into a bottomless pit.
  and the conventional platforming segments aren't helping either, since those require taking it slow.
  again, the going slow or going fast is not the issue, the issue is that the gameplay and the level design are not compatible.
  
  it was most egregious with the super sonic stage, who runs moves extremely quick, and the lower path of the last sonic stage, both having small platforms that require tight jumps.

• unfairness;
  to iterate on the previous point, having alot of sudden bottomless pits appear out of nowhere along with the fast gameplay was quite frustrating to say the least.
  
  the first stage really needed a checkpoint, dying to the boss and then having to redo the whole stage was not very fun, especially with that sharkie section, which was annoying to get through (thankfully i found a bug to bypass it lol)
  
  the last phase of metal overlord having it so one hit kills you, meaning one mistake cost a life, was also quite punishing.

• boss design;
  the first boss was poorly designed imo, the first phase having it so you have to get on the platforms to escape getting hit, and the platforms themselves requiring wall jumping to reach while also being small and easy to miss
  the second phase which had alot of waiting around for the missiles to drop.
  
  the first phase of metal overlord was quite frustrating and punishing.
  the fight is very lengthy with metal having a alot of health points in addition to a regenerating shield that requires breaking before being able to hit metal.
  a small missile that follows you around to waste your time dodging it.
  the laser that destroys the tornado upon contact, immediately ending the fight.

other noteworthy things, they aren't technically bad, but i thought i'd point them out nonetheless.

• there seems to be some audio mixing issues, some tracks are extremely loud compared to others.
  also some tracks felt like they did not fit the scene at all, like the track before neo metal sonic transforms, which is used in undertale in a heroic moment, so it didn't fit with him there.

• i know that destroying the extra lives is supposed to be anti-cheesing, but i think you shouldn't do that, some cheesing is fine as long as it doesn't break the game.
  you're supposed to let the player have some fun, even if they choose to cheese.

there's still other things i could talk about, like the inclusion of challenges that show how much you care about what you were doing, but I choose to focus on what I think was important to point out.

so with all that being said, I hope my feedback could be of use to you and your future projects, I'll be looking out for what you make in the future ^^

Mmmmmmmmm