adding a review for this while i'm here because it's downright criminal how this went completely under the radar.
figured i'd leave a few tips for people that want to play this later using what i discovered on my own so far:
the game has a lot of interesting mechanics and movement options; it's also fairly challenging.
i can think of at least two challenges that require extreme knowledge of how the "ness" ability works, and both of them reward a chime so they're pretty much mandatory for completion.
(the balloon challenge in the top left of the map, where the timing is very strict, and the entire room in the middle of the map, which is already quite difficult to find and is basically a ness skill check, since you can't traverse it in any other way).
for starters, i recommend going to the right of the starting screen where you'll be able to unlock the hookshot ability. this will help immensely with getting some tapes to upgrade yourself early on.
i made the mistake of going to the left first on my first playthrough and that made it much more difficult to make significant progress. once you get the hookshot, you can start going left where you'll be able to get glide.
between bounce and glide, it's possible to adjust yourself indefinitely while bouncing on balloons, and the hookshot will allow for quick recovery and air mobility, which would otherwise result in constantly falling in water and being stuck in the same restricted area for a while.
my one gripe with the game is how the various abilities (besides how to perform them) are mostly left unexplained, along with their upgrades. there's also some controls that aren't explicitly started, and knowing about them makes a massive difference.
for example, you can perform ness using C instead of Ctrl. this will prevent you from accidentally closing the game window with Ctrl+W if you accidentally press them in combination while messing around with the ability.
incidentally, you can only direct the ness ability using left or right, so ctrl up is not even a proper combination, but it's still easy to accidentally input by mistake if you're controlling the character at the same time.
while you can use A and D to control the ability, you can also use the left and right arrow keys (while the playable character itself can only move with WASD)
in regards to upgrades, bounce and glide are the most useful to upgrade, since they increase how high you can bounce and your maximum air time.
investing a bit into hookshot may be useful for increased range, although i never figured out if that's what it actually does once upgraded.
movement speed is self-explanatory, but i personally never upgraded it more than once because i was worried it may mess with my control over precise platforming.
upgrading ness increases distance covered when launched, and at max level it also increases your speed (reduces time necessary to cover that distance).
however, sometimes covering more distance is detrimental (specifically for the dedicated room in the middle of the map, which is designed with a specific distance covered by the ability in mind).
in regards to the grind ability, it may be because it's unlocked way later when you've already gotten used to your other abilities, but i never found any real use for it.
it was also difficult to figure out where you can use it or not; you need to be holding shift while overlapping "wires", which are specifically the ones that usually lead to buttons. (one example is freefalling on the starting screen while holding shift. you'll automatically grab onto the wire that passes through the whole screen).
above all, fully upgrading recall is a boon. aside from allowing you to teleport back to the starting area, when maxed out it allows to freely fast-travel between any area.
you need to hold E until only the map is shown, and while holding E you can use arrow keys to change the highlighted area on the map where you want to fast travel to, then release E.
back when i played to completion, i managed to amass a total of 22 upgrade points, so there should be at least 22 tapes you can collect, for those interested in upgrading their abilities.
in any case, you can always re-spec if you talk to the npc in the starting area (you can view your current upgrades at any point by pressing TAB, but you can only re-allocate them by talking to said npc).
additionally, the last time i played there was a bug which unlocked chime medals even without collecting all of them.
i never figured out how it works specifically, but my guess is that chimes collected over multiple playthroughs count towards the "overall amount" in regards to medals.
that is to say (unless it's been patched since), it's likely possible to get the medal for "collecting all 9 chimes" by collecting the first one repeatedly over multiple new games.
it's still possible to collect all 9 chimes legitimately in a single playthrough (as i've done it before), but as mentioned the last 2 or 3 are extremely difficult to get
