Very cute, pretty faithful to the original look of Bubble Bobble! The controls however are definitely the worst thing here, it's veeery slippery and at times feels like you're controlling a weird car that just refuses to stop after the "gas" is released. The character stops quick if you've built only a little bit of speed, buuut if you're at full speed and then let go it takes like what feels like a full second for the character to completely stop. Honestly feels like you're on ice constantly, and makes controlling things pretty frustrating.
The fact that the controller (hitting left, right, etc) orientation within the world isn't global doesn't help either, noticed it the moment I reached the very first little crossroad in the game after getting out of the initial "2D" room, I kept walking left and right expecting the character to walk straight, buuut it didn't, instead kinda drifting towards the edges. The control orientation depends on the camera here which is prolly fine with most games, buuut since everything is so angular here and only built with rectangles it would honestly be much more comfortable to just have it all be global. There's no camera control anyway (unless I missed it), so no need to tie it to the camera really. Not sure if I used all the terms here tbh, buuut what I'm saying is that, when I for example press right, I'd want the character to move right according to the world's shapes/direction, not to the right of the camera.
Speakin of the camera, the little 3D rooms with enemies could poooossibly also use a static camera, like with the 2D rooms, something to show the whole room at once with, maybe with some adjusting to the room layouts. The 2D rooms cooould pooossibly use a strong-ish orthographic effect, would make the retro vibe stronger, that one is really just an idea though, not sure if it would honestly work that well.
Level design wise, uh yeah started nice, though after the first 3D room there was a lil platforming challenge where the camera was a touch too close, especially for the yellow platform you have to do a diagonal jump for. Kept failing the jump a good few times cos of the camera, and uh, also cos of the controlling problems already mentioned. Round 1 as a whole was pretty nice tho, Round 2 on the other hand was very... claustrofobic. I'm also a bit afraid if there will be precision platforming using the bubbles going forward, at the moment it was very difficult trying to jump on em.
A huge shame a 360 gamepad didn't work with the game, hoping it'll be worked in! Whiiiile I had much to say about I'm looking forward to seeing more of this project, hopefully things will improve well from here. The graphics especially are amazing and very nice in this, very cute.
I'll be working on the controller issue!