Really appreciate you giving me the opportunity to play this [on stream.](https://www.youtube.com/live/EVIN76_gvMg?si=a6razIdEjpiax3yX&t=4824)
*Full commentary in the VOD.* The tldr: I struggled to understand which character I was playing at the start. I think the choice to make the player character red and the npcs yellow is confusing considering the visual language that has been standardized for decades now. I am talking about a red = bad, green = good, sort of thing. By all accounts I thought the player character was an NPC. Did not even register that the character was moving because of my inputs. A simple indication, even just an arrow pointing to the sprite would be fine.
The on-boarding is pretty rough. It is mentioned in the landing page that the levels are not in order of difficulty. For reference: I did not seek out easier layouts because I was not versed in the mechanics, so I tried to be patient and experiment a bit figuring out each scenario I played. Again, yadda, yadda, "standardized things," consecutively ordering levels by difficulty is something players are conditioned for, so not having this off the get-go was frustrating for me as a player.
The input system is tricky to understand at first. The intended behavior being that arrows steer the character but will only move the character if the next directional input is the same direction the character is facing. This seems counter intuitive and adds extra steps. Perhaps I did not play far enough to understand the complexity you were introducing with this implementation, but it makes more sense to me to remove that redundancy and have the one direction steer and move the character at the same time. This would also reduce the number of inputs and allow more efficiency with input sequencing.
Visually, the aesthetics are nice. Other than my issues with some of the color choices, the sprite work is on point. Everything in the environment is distinct and easy to read. I understand windows are meant to block my character but not my signal. Solid walls block everything and gates can open when the connected button is pressed. I do think the gate should be a solid object if it will be blocking my signals aswell. Right now it looks like a cage where there are gaps in the sprite, this would suggest my signal should travel through it.
This concept is engaging and with more refinement could be an exciting puzzle game to master. I hope you continue expanding on this idea and I will absolutely play again if a post jam version is ever released.