A fun game and definitely a worthy successor to the Classics, but there were some confusing changes to game mechanics that needed explanation and familiarity with the other games actually made it worse:

1. The fact that some Blue Essences are only unlocked after certain stone pillars are broken was not explained. Nothing in the other games works like this, and I wasted hours searching for Essences that weren't unlocked yet.

2. That the floating glowy sparks are spores that mark mushroom locations. In the other games there's only one kind of glowy spark thing, and they're fairyflies. I kept trying to figure out how to catch them to take them to the hungry plants and got frustrated because I couldn't. The fact that the spores look almost exactly like the fairyflies from the first two games doesn't help.

The lack of any explanation of these changes introduced something of an early learning curve, but once you get past that, it was a lot of fun. Super bouncy fox is great. :)

Conditions for inclusion:

• -The player character must be consistently a fox; the fox must not be merely a skin or a character option
  
  
• -Must have 100% working Steam achievements
  
  
• -Must not be a visual novel

Game #26: William and Sly
(aka: William and Sly 3)

The developer of an influential Flash game series comes back over 12 years later with an ambitious new installment -- bigger, longer, and full open-world 3D! And it's... actually pretty okay!

William and Sly is a series about a fox who runs magical errands for his wizard friend, and along the way tries to eat all the mushrooms in the world. The games have a wonderful "zen" feel to them, welcoming you to run around a moody and tranquil forest wherever your heart desires as you listen to some nice chill background tracks. All of that is true of this game; it somewhat succeeded in capturing the essence of the original games, although that's a tough comparison to make between a half-hour 2D platformer and a 10-hour 3D platformer.

In this game, your primary goal is to collect over 450 mushrooms scattered around the land (because of course, that's always Sly's top priority). But there are also some cursed obelisks scattered around the land that you need to dispel. Dispelling an obelisk requires three specific "blue essences" of specific plants or animals scattered around the world. Locations of essences start out unmarked on the map, some become marked once they're unlocked, and others you'll just have to keep your eyes open for. You'll be doing a lot of backtracking, but it's no big deal when you can run as fast as Sly does, and you'll be finding more mushrooms with every trip.

Things I liked:

• -I loved the sublime mood of the game. The design of the open world combined with the new music tracks just absolutely nails it. It's stirring, but melancholy at the same time. I loved just getting lost in this world for hours at a time.
  
  
• -I loved the sense of freedom. You can scamper up most cliffs and steep slopes if you're persistent.
  
  
• -I really like how fast the fox runs. I'm too used to fox walking simulators where your maximum speed is at about a third of this. Sly can absolutely dash across the landscape with little effort, and it feels like the whole world belongs to you. You even get an upgrade that lets you run even faster, and it suddenly feels like you're playing Sonic Frontiers.
  
  
• -I loved the effect of the red mushroom spores visible in the air from far away. Really makes you feel like Sly is tracking their scent on the wind.
  
  
• -When you're down to those last few collectibles in the game, there are some features to help you find them more easily, which is much appreciated.

Things I didn't like:

• -Tank controls. You can only run forward and backward, and you turn Sly by rotating the camera. I feel like the developer gave up trying to make complex animations for veering and turning, which is usually what gives foxes most of their personality in games like this. You're stuck staring at Sly's tail for 90% of the game. It also makes running downhill an awkward pain.
  
  
• -Whenever the game requires any sort of precise platforming, it's absolutely awful. Tank controls make it feel like you're platforming with a racecar. Running backward makes Sly run behind the camera and become invisible until you stop moving. Sly has no ground-shadow to line up your jump. There are no coyote frames, so trying to jump in midair will just eat your input -- so you can't accurately jump while you're running downhill or over bumpy terrain, since your feet will never be completely touching the ground. Thankfully, the game requires very little in the way of precise platforming -- you're mostly just racing across gorgeous terrain in a straight line -- and that's good, because if it did, it would be some of the most frustrating platforming I've ever experienced.
  
  
• -This game brings back the worst element from William and Sly 1: underground caves. It is not fun to hunt for small holes in the ground just to get the last few mushrooms in the game, and there are no elegant design elements to lead you toward them. Even the aforementioned late-game convenience features don't exactly help. If you're observant, you might notice that cave entrances are surrounded by round boulders, but that's the only hint you're getting. The last 70 or so mushrooms are going to be super frustrating without a guide (and probably even with a guide) so be prepared. Oh, and you actually need to find all the mushrooms to properly finish the game, which is an unfortunate first for this series.
  
  
• -The game doesn't seem to be well-optimized. I've heard a lot of complaints that you need a powerful computer to run it consistently. I have a fantastic graphics card, but the game kept overheating my CPU too.
  
  
• -There's a late-game powerup that's too overpowered. You may feel like a dunce for having done everything the hard way up until that point -- but using the power on the remaining challenges feels like you're cheating. There's no even medium where you feel like you're doing things the right way. Using the power also separates you from the sublime atmosphere of running across the landscape, which I found to be the game's biggest strength. In my opinion, the power should've had a stamina bar and a long cooldown between uses, so that it would still feel special every time you use it.

This game could use a lot of polish, but I really found myself looking forward to playing every time. It stumbles a little at the starting line and the finish line, but it's a wonderful 10-hour relax-a-thon otherwise.

5.5 / 10!

I think I'm a fan of the series now, and I'd love to see a William and Sly 4.

A neat little scavenger hunt game that has you racing across the painterly landscape to collect objects, some of which are obtained by little mini-games. Not quite my cup of tea but I enjoyed the author's flash games when I was in middle/high school and kept up with it now and then.

controls are a bit wonky, gameplay a little repetetive and the map is a bit too big, but it's still fun. it's not that similar to the old flash game verisons of the flash series, but still gave me a nice nostalgic feeling :)

Does a really good job translating the feel of the flash games to 3d. Aside from pretty much abandoning any sense of a platformer in favor of going all in on just exploration and discovery. I'm not sure it'd do well with anyone other than those here for the nostalgia of the old flash games tho. There's a lot of fox games out there with more substance.

That said, I enjoyed it for the most part.

The controls feel really clunky tho. Only being able to move forward and back, while left and right just rotate the camera, feels extremely off and makes any sort of fine control nearly impossible. I found myself making 8-point turns in circles around mushrooms trying to collect them when it would have been smooth and easy if I was allowed to just move sideways. It feels good when you're racing across the map, but trying to make small precise movements is pretty frustrating.

Never played the original game, but decided to give it a try since it had a cute fox, and I ended up really enjoying it. The world was really pretty, and the quality of the sound design positively surprised me. One of the better open world games I've played. Honestly surprised this game haven't gotten more attention.

great cozy experience. followed the development for years on facebook, so glad to see it out.

A fun, magic filled game about a fox with the biggest zoomies and a bottomless stomach for mushrooms. I never got frustrated or bored and enjoyed the atmosphere so so much! Loved it

An enjoyable zen-ish game. You're a fox with zoomies and no fall damage running around the terrain collecting mushrooms and solving minor puzzles. If you're after a challenging game look elsewhere, but this is great when you want to tune out and enjoy zooming around the countryside with relatively straightforward objectives.

Been waiting for this for like 15 years, so over half my life at this point
Was really fun :)
It hard crashed a few times, but it was still fun