Recent reviews by faun

Wow, whether I'd recommend the demo depends on when you play it. The new part (available just this week) is what I played first. Afterwards, I played the earlier one, It's wild how much better the recent one is given that the mechanics barely changed. I would've described the earlier demo as straight bad. The newer one, I crave more. The puzzles are better, there's no nonsense, everything's condensed, and the glyph puzzles are more responsive.

Since that part of the demo hasn't got much time left, I guess this is going to have to be a No review.

Looks good so far! In the demo, it's mostly an advanced implementation of fairly traditional sokoban with some cool twists, but somehow I wasn't bored for a second, looking forward to seeing where it goes.

I playtested this a little when it was just grey boxes, I'll try not to spoil anything, but this theme and atmosphere suits it well, some of the mechanics coming later will feel a lot more natural knowing that I'm going to be some kind of metaphysical sabateur.

Solid spooky cute fae-cursed atmosphere (*pristine* environment art) and solid gameplay, or it least it was for me on the automatically suggested 'High' setting. The story is excellent, it isn't always delivered in a digestable way or in a way that immediately strikes the heart, but often enough, it is. Generally, it's about struggling to lead a good life in a world that makes that difficult.

Some mild antispoilers to save you from various disappointments: Tets does not lead a triumphant life, and justice is not done in the end, nor is the injustice of any of it really properly discussed. The protagonist wanders too and fro under the unfluence of various ideological spells and curses. He has no beliefs of his own. If the player has beliefs, they will have to play against one belief or another to finish the game. The ending feels quite true, though. It do be that way sometimes.
There doesn't seem to be a way to do anything with the withered otherworld portals you find in various places in the world, which in many ways is effective, it makes the portal remnants more poignant as monuments to the earth-bound fairies' condition, they truly can't return. But I guess it reminds me... the game loves the idea of *secrets* but there don't seem to be any really great secrets in this game, nothing like the secrets of, eg, void stranger (which I've always found fascinating, but cruel and miserable, but if you're reading this, you may, somehow, like it, so give it a look) or Ooo (which I recommend highly) or any of the metroidbranias (eg Animal Well). It seems like deeper secrets might have been planned, (or dare we hope, might already be present, undiscovered), given that the player does at one point receive an item that can reopen the portals, but it doesn't amount to anything. Maybe it just got cut and that's the end of it.

It's good when a puzzle game has atmosphere that's pleasing just to bumble aimlessly around in as you wait for your solution to cohere. This one has that, at least, it did for me. Oh, to be an orb in an orb's machine.

A perfect little puzzle metroidbrania. Never boring. I initially felt it was just a bit too short (where's the fourth o? Wasn't there supposed to be a fourth o?), but after overcoming my only major hitch, I found the secrets, and I think it's a satisfactory length.

It rocks. Wild places. That characteristic liberating *dynamic* more thickly present than ever before.

Could have been done much better. None of the control schemes are especially complicated or interesting and part of the reason for that is the fact that you can only do one thing at a time with a mouse. Quop style keyboard controls, or multitouch controls, would have had much more potential for fun.

I didn't think I liked sliding puzzles that much, it turned out that indeed I don't. This is one of those cases where I'm not sure whether it's fair to leave a negative review given that the game is pretty straightforward about wht it's going to be.

But I don't think the title fully equips the customer to make their decision, They still have to ask, isn't the fact that an experienced game developer got this into sliding puzzles a clue that there might be something really magical here?

And my answer is, I don't think so. I don't see it, anyway.

Pretty shallow. Overwhelms the player with almost meaningless choices. Features no real exploration or routing, there are just just three linear paths. Artstyle too rigid.

129 hours and I'm still not tired of the community levels. Many of them were better as puzzles than the main campaign.