Solid exploration and 'rhythmic platformer' game, personally I found the world very endearing to navigate, takes about 3 hours to finish, but the game does not have achievements for the optional objectives, so you could maybe explore it for another 2 hours on top of it. The visuals and the coloring really stand out, it has the whole surreal exploration going for it similar to Dreaming Sarah, but the mythos are very different, not really sure which culture these come from or maybe they are just original. The game essentially has 2 parts to it, you have overworld that mostly works as an exploration/narrative segment, sometimes with various side-quests and objectives, and you also have a couple of platforming gauntlets with low to mid difficulty.
[b]Update:[/b] they added like 20 achievements for optional objectives
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3652387818
(I mean look at these backgrounds, the game has so many of them, almost every second screen is like a gorgeous painting, they looked decent in the trailer, but actually playing the game it's just very mesmerizing)
Even though it's not a hard game, there are some rough sections that have very tight timings, maybe not like 'precision platformer' hard, but they can be a little frustrating, especially in the game that otherwise is so easy going. Most of the jump timing is actually tied to the beat of the music, which is kinda interesting, eventually I found it easier to memorize the melody instead of using my eyes, actually makes it easier. It also has good gameplay variety, aside from adding various new mechanics, there are also small mini-games you can find around the world.
The game feels densely populated with weird creatures and strange characters, and they all have some unusual design to them, it's like the entire game is 'one big fan art bait'. I assume it's just pixel art, but it almost has that watercolor painting vibe to it.
[h1] Pros: [/h1]
(+) The design of the world and mythos really stand out, it has so many weird looking characters, and it's like all of them deserve some fan art, I really loved the warm colors of the game and just how much variety it had with no 2 locations looking the same.
(+) It has some optional exploration, for some reason they didn't tie any achievements to it, so it's like a 3 hour game, with a few hours of extras.
(+) Endearing and enjoyable exploration, has some gameplay variety with various mini-games and mechanics
[h1] Feedback: [/h1]
[u] Just some random things: [/u]
- I have to say the game feels very lite on achievements, it only has 4 of them for the narrative when you have dozens of optional tasks that have nothing attached to them. I would encourage to reward the player with achievements for any 'heart' objectives for example, as well as maybe getting higher scores on mini-games
- in the dinner game, maybe you could color code which order you making, I know it's just left to right, but it's easy to lose track of it
- the game was not hard, but some of the timing felt strangely punishing, maybe you could make the death hitboxes a bit smaller than the actual sprites, it's very easy to touch the edges in this game, overall the timing with some vanishing platforms was perhaps too frequent
- sometimes those water boosts were not giving me enough distance, you kinda have to fiddle with them sometimes
- is there an issue with the game not counting tickets exactly? Sometimes I feel like I take 3 but it put in 2 or a different number (mostly in areas where you can get more than a maximum
- I had one random crash, posted it in the forum
[b] Overall Thoughts: 8/10 [/b]
Aside from a few random difficulty spikes it was a very wholesome journey, lovely characters, lovely world to explore, gorgeous backgrounds and just very sweet experience. It's a little shorter than I expected at 3 hours, but like I said, they didn't have achievements for every hidden thing, you can find more things to do. For me personally the backgrounds really carried the game, I have played many dream exploration games, but this one was just so vibrant no matter where you look.
[code]Niche, obscure and underrated games: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/ [/code]
