I feel the need to start this review with the simple fact that I was LURED into this.
One of the developers, a ''friend'' of mine actually, approached me, and uttered the following words:
“Pelzi, Have you ever Frested before? You should Frest all over the place.''
This wasn't a suggestion, This was a ritual incantation. A biblical command, issued by whatever ancient parasite now controlled the husk of a human who stood before me. And the terrifying thing? He said it seriously. Like it was normal. Like “Fresting” was a way of life. WHAT DOES FRESTING EVEN MEAN??? I could feel the air get colder. The worlds pierced my spine like a needle. Everyone else in the call immediately screamed at me to ignore him, scrambling to silence him. Begged me to cover my ears, They warned me like survivors of some terrible incident that clearly I was not privy to. They spoke with a tone of genuine and unfiltered, almost animalistic fear. Of course I thought they were joking, exaggerating for the meme or the bit.
They weren’t.
The moment I launched the game, I was greeted with a stale image title card. Just a static image of an in-game background. There’s no motion. No atmosphere. It’s as if they took a screenshot, pasted it in, and hit “Export” But still, I told myself: okay the title screen isnt great but maybe the gameplay is okay?
No.
Frest is ''free'' but that's a lie, I don't know what I lost after I played this but I feel hollow, Like someone took a spoon and scraped the inside of my skull. It was a project made by a small team. I want to be generous about that. I want to applaud the ambition. But the moment you realize that every single bug that playtesters reported was ignored..
You stop seeing it as a game, instead you begin to see it as a deliberate act of harm, as a weapon.
They credited a lighting consultant.
That is either a lie or a crime, I have never been more insulted by a line of text on a screen.
Either this person is fictional, they are a ghost, or they screamed at a keyboard until Unity compiled.
The lighting doesn’t “illuminate.” It confuses. Shadows stretch into oblivion. Nothing looks natural. Everything is dim, yet overexposed. You can fix it—sort of—by opening the pause menu, clicking “Apply,” and closing the menu.
That’s it. That’s the hidden magic incantation. No prompt. No tip. No tutorial.
Just this ancient workaround passed around like a dark secret in Discord DMs.
The game has special mechanics, Tools / Abilities you can use to advance puzzles and whatnot, But alot of it is explained really really badly. You’re thrown into puzzles and sequences with no direction, no context, and no care. Best part?
If you're even slightly clever, you can just Jump or wedge yourself out of bounds and skip entire parts of the game. Turning the mechanics they spent ages coding, into mere suggestions. Not because you're cheating—because the design is so simple that a toddler could probably do it.
Want to solve a puzzle? You could! Or you could clip through a wall or jump over the intended route because SCREW the cool powers we spent ages coding right??!? WHO NEEDS THAT?!?!
Boundaries are a suggestion.
Collisions? Optional.
Scripting? Ha.
The boss fights actually aren't that bad, but you get absolutely zero checkpoints while fighting them, so you better hope you have a FLAWLESS performance, if not? damn that sucks man.
This last part is the entire reason I even made this review.
Throughout Frest, you’re followed by a little frog companion. then, in the final level, the frog turns to you and says:
“ACTUALLY I’M EVIL NOW HAHAHA TIME TO FREST ALL OVER YOUR FACE”
And then you are cast into a level I can only describe as purgatory constructed by sadists.
This final gauntlet is unhinged. the level is a series of floating platforms over a void while jumping and solving puzzles at the same time while being chased by ''The Piss Laser™'' a yellow beam that shrieks across the screen at double your speed and kills on contact. This level isn’t “hard” in the sense of skill or design. It’s unfair. It punishes even the tiniest slip:
A missed jump? Instant death.
A delayed puzzle interaction? Instant death.
A momentary lapse in focus? Instant death.
And death here means resetting the entire level from the beginning. No checkpoints, no mercy, no quick saves.
This is not a final level — it’s an existential test of how much needless torture a human being can endure before screaming “enough.” It takes every ounce of goodwill you might have left after slogging through the earlier mediocrity and tears it to shreds. It actively turns the player experience into a hellish cycle of frustration, despair, and exhaustion.
As I write this, I have a headache. My left eye twitches when I hear the word “frest.” I have been changed. and not in the way a great game changes you. No. Frest changed me the way a shipwreck changes a sailor, It didn't just waste my time, it took something from me.
In conclusion: eh it was okay, not enough cats though
