This was developed as the mandatory platformer project during my time at The Game Assembly and we took great inspiration from Ori and the Blind Forest for our main mechanic, the starburst.
The starburst launched Polaris forward and whatever she bursted off of in the opposite direction. This was used for movement and puzzle solving alike and in the end created the quick and tight gameplay that our fellow students and teachers gave the highest grade acheivable.
I focused mainly on gameplay and user experience during this project and one of my big contributions was an expanded XINPUT class with features such as an interface for easy implementation of rumble and allowing hotswapping between keyboard + mouse and a gamepad.