A Happy Place

I came across this game through "A Happy Place Deep Dive (...)" by the youtuber "Doctor Dirck's Lore and Let's Plays" of which not even 20 minutes in I knew I was interested and went to buy the game proceeding to do as much as I could within the next few days. I have been a fan of 3D platformers for a long while and have played a good few from across the spectrum of quality and I will say right now despite a few set backs I do recommend "A Happy Place" and feel it was worth getting! The game is fun to jump around and perform its movement abilities, of which interestingly 1 uses a relatively easy to find resource (the same is used for a sadly kind of useless attack range extension on your slap move), after 100+% completion of one of its collectibles the resource becomes infinite but before that its an interesting game design decision as you end up trying to economize a pretty useful move (again its not that hard to get more of it, but its still a decision I do enjoy over all). The levels for the most part are good fun though some do end up feeling... a bit too long, not in time taken but in literal distance. For some of the atmospheric set pieces it makes sense, but in some levels I felt it may have been a tad too far for some of the missions (not annoyingly so, just a pet peeve). The scares (btw there are scares) do end up also being pretty well executed, though some as they are controlled in part by the player can become goofy as you move back and forth and the entities do the same... adds a bit of levity I enjoy. The bosses of which there are... a handful are for the most part very similar and while on hindsight they do tell you how to beat them, the actual ability to grab the thing you need to grab at times feel finicky making so by the penultimate one I was jumping around like a hyena trying to grab the thing, a bit frustrating but not game ending. The music in the game is strange in that there are moments usually in the darker sections where the music is actually very good, and in some levels its fun and memorable, but in the first quarter of the game it'll feel a bit rought, and later there are events where the music stops for atmospheric reasons and events where it... just fails to trigger (you can tell because you still have the fun sound effects that usually disappear in the atmospheric segments) this is obviously a bug but at times I was unsure if it was a bug as, well, some times its taken for scares... The game has a interesting system where if you die twice and game over, your main collectible gets taken from you and you have to pick it up from "the pit", this was never an issue for me, not because I didn't game over, I did a few times, but more due to divine grace the collectibles all spawned in a vertical line from the center of the pit which I appreciate so much, though I know that's not how it was designed to be and can imagine might irk some people. luckily game overing by itself is difficult enough (with some exceptions) that you dont have to worry... this is because: if lose all health (after a certain early cutscene) a second character will take your place and you can return to the first characters death spot to recollect them, allowing for a sort of dark soulsian soul retrieve of the previous character allowing you to if you die yet again, have the first character back... this is good over all but there are very very specific circumstances where you may enter a death loop where you simply off better just letting yourself die the second death and go brave the pit, for example if your character dies very very far away from spawn as you explored, or if you die in a dangerous enough place (like a pit thats hard to return to), or finally if unluckily you fell through the world through faulty swimming collision (which happened twice in total). Finally on the respawn mechanic... there is a check point system in the game inside SOME levels, and if you die your other character spawns there... however if saved once you cannot use that specific checkpoint a second time, rather having to go save of the other one to then return again to the first checkpoint. If you are a compulsive saver you'll notice this as for example you get 2 collectible, save, then get to more and try to save again but cant, so you go find another checkpoint, but end up having to close the game for whatever reason, then on reload of the game you lost those later 2 collectibles you got after that save you managed (it is important to note, the levels are small enough that over all this is rarely if ever a problem unless you are busy in real life, the main collectibles autosave, the secondary ones do not) To end this review: ---A Movement related section--- Regarding moves besides what I have mentioned above, there is currently (unsure it is fixable) issue where the main... lets call it "speedrun" method of moving fast which is running, crouching and then jumping quickly, leaving the crouch button pressed and pressing (or mashing) the jump button. at times if your joystick is slightly lesser than it was before you may instead use the dreaded backwards flip jump. That dreaded backwards flip is a move which in theory could be useful but sadly due to how it works it was only useful in 3 situations, all of which where only because the jump was slightly higher than the regular jump could do upwards and I was out of the lunge move resource. It also cannot bonk into walls allowing for the games wall jump "tech kick(?)" I feel as though it probably should, but since it doesn't make you face the wall I understand why it doesn't... Maybe making it a direction flick side jump like in Super Mario 64 could have been a bit less intrusive but that's something I feel for having played Super Mario 64 and not everyone will feel similarly. The tech kick itself tends to work well, however there are circumstances where slight inclines on the walls will make you fail to do them, still it is dependable near flawlessly in everywhere but "the pit" in which some rooms make it a bit hard to tech kick despite it being the main way you ascend them... finally there are currently 2... not really exploits but interesting properties to the moves I will comment mostly due to them being fun. the crouch jump if almost perfectly parallel to a wall (touching the wall) will make you slide along the wall, this is not really super useful but its amusing to see, and tech kicks have an interesting property where they propel you to the opposite direction YOU are facing from the wall, as a result you can perform chains of tech kicks on any L shaped corner between the 2 lines of the L. just face like 90º from the corner into any of the walls and have fun. --- Again over all none of the issues were a big enough deal to anger me, some were a time loss, some were a bit silly, but over all it was a great 10+ hours : ) (and apologies for any typos)