I would absolutely agree with all the other reviews which say to avoid learning anything about Fremdganger before going in. It would not have been anywhere near the experience it was had I known what I was getting myself into. That said, even after I got the idea of what was going on, I was still enjoying myself. Thankfully, the dev bothered with actually having an entertaining game rather than just a clever one. I do think the price might be a tad steep. Unfortunately, we live in a post-Vampire Survivors world wherein I'm just not sure I can justify a game of this depth at $10. It happened to be on sale when I bought it, I think for something like 5 or 6 bucks, and I personally think it's worth that. You will absolutely get 2-3 hours from the game, even if you're just rushing through it with blinders on, but you can easily wring an extra hour or two out of it, if you feel compelled to look into every little thing.
That's all I've got without spoiling anything. I would, however, like to talk about some specific aspects, so don't look down here unless you've already played the game. Don't look at it if you're even the least bit interested, because it loses a lot of its impact if you have any details at all. Just wait for it to go on sale, again, and buy it then. If you absolutely need something to convince you, I will say that Steam's recommendation of [spoiler]Inscryption[/spoiler] is dead-on.
[spoiler]I found the way that each "layer" was done in a completely different style both visually and in terms of gameplay to be rather impressive. I at first thought that it was going to be an RPG Maker version of Inscryption, but it went much further than that. I should also note that the way this was actually implemented via a number of plugins was very clever, especially the clicker game running off of that Quests plugin.
I loved the horror comedy aspects of the game, especially in the ending. They were a great way to come back down after more tense scenes, particularly the cathartic payoff after the ending gauntlet.
Speaking of the ending gauntlet, the most difficult part of that was without a doubt the controls in the first person section. I'm not going to complain too much, since it's essentially a clever hacky plugin to turn a 2D engine into a pseudo-3D one, but it simply does not control well under pressure, so I hope that isn't used in any further work (or is accomplished in a less awkward way).
I was somewhat disappointed in the overall plot, I'm sorry to say. While there are implications of Lovecraftian horror in terms of the player actually being one layer down from a sleeping Old God, there doesn't appear to be anything more than a quick mention of this idea just before the game ends. Maybe there are more secrets than what I found, but it didn't look that way from my digging.
And let me tell you, I did some digging. I spent about half an hour trying everything I could think of to open the Azure door, only to finally go with the last-resort option of digging into the game files for well over an hour. I did find the code to open it, but the reward is just a nod at the player's ingenuity (along with a very small German lesson). As far as I could find, otherwise, there is somehow a way to get the shovel and reach the end of the puzzle in the initial path of the "game," so I'm not sure just how deep that path goes, but that was the only other "oh wow" moment for me. I was hoping the messages on the repaired computer would lead somewhere, but I found no other mention of the names listed or the numbers being used elsewhere. To be clear, I don't blame the developer for not adding a massive secret ARG as part of their already well-crafted game, but I do wish that there was a bit more of a mystery to solve.
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