Glittermitten Grove

I feel bad leaving a negative review, because each individual piece of gameplay is SOLIDLY good. They just don't come together in a way that's enjoyable. The starting section is lovely. A bit annoyingly opaque at times, but simple once you figure out how things work. The tree physics is nice, and the light mechanics are interesting. Winter can feel punishing, but it's actually quite forgiving in the end. Everything from here on is a spoiler. [spoiler]The dungeoning section is again opaque at first, but simple once you understand what everything does. This section is the real main game; every other mini-game you complete brings you back here to the dungeon with some upgrade or altered state or other. It feels like a puzzle most of the time, which is a pretty interesting mechanic. None of the other games follow logically from each other or from anything in the main section, which is a little disappointing; at least in Frog Fractions, there was a comedic narrative tying each section together. I would have liked to see more comedy and story.[/spoiler] But many have said this. That's not enough to make me uninstall. My real gripe is more acute: [spoiler]They won't let you retry some minigames. Frog Fractions doesn't let you retry either, but it was short and simple. This game is so much longer and more complex that if you want to replay it all again to get back to that minigame, you'll be there for several hours. Picture this: You're doing the detective game set in Dante's Inferno. You've narrowed it down to two suspects in the database, you know one final piece of information that will make the difference, and you know where the suspect ran off to. You think you should maybe put that last bit of info in, but you decide you'll head to the next circle of Hell first and [i]then[/i] log it. Except as soon as you arrive in the next circle, the game locks you out of putting your info in and then tells you you've found the suspect but didn't have a warrant. Because it doesn't let you log the info. The info that you HAVE. And then you lose. Because it doesn't let you log the info that you were ABOUT TO LOG. And then it kicks you out of the minigame. That you WOULD HAVE WON IF IT LET YOU LOG THE INFO. And then it DOESN'T LET YOU TRY IT AGAIN.[/spoiler] It's too maddening. Don't get invested. Save yourself.

Only real gamers understand the complexities of Glittermitten Grove

My review for this game is more of an honest review instead of the usual meme reviews left on here that gloss over the games twists to remain spoiler-free with that said, [b] SPOILERS AHEAD [/b] [h2] The Bait-and-Switch [/h2] Glittermitten Grove is an intentional followup to Frog Fractions (even more obvious by the end credits of the game). The fairy world shown from the steam page and in-game is the fake game that covers up the real game that begins when you descend into the caves and enter the ASCII-TXT world. From this point on, the fairy theme is essentially abandoned (unlike Frog Fractions) and the ASCII-TXT world becomes the main hub of progression. [h2] Fun Minigames, Zero Cohesion[/h2] To progress within the ASCII-TXT world, you come across and play various genre-shifting minigames to earn items and letters (letters needed for final portion of the game). In isolation, many of these mini-games were actually quite creative and could stand alone if expanded, I especially enjoyed the Dante's Inferno and Battle Chess games. Others are totally nonsensical but a funny concept, like having to shave Barack Obama's face under a time limit. My dissapointment with these games, though, are it's total lack of cohesion. Frog Fractions tied its genre-shifting minigames back to a central frog theme and progression, but Glittermitten Grove offers zero connection between the fairy wrapper, the ASCII-TXT world, and the mini-games. The game is just fetching arbitrary items to solve arbitrary puzzles. The lack of any narrative or thematic glue makes the progression feel unrewarding. When I beat the game, the game doesn't really culminate into anything, its essentially just [i]"Congratulations, you solved the puzzles! The End."[/i] The conclusion of the game is not satisfying and it was more relieving to have beaten the game than be happy to have experienced it. [h2] Clever Puzzles Tainted by Obnoxious Design [/h2] To the games credit, the ASCII-TXT world features many creative puzzle solutions. The mechanics for solving them are flexible enough that I was occasionally able to find unconventional solutions, which did feel good. Unfortunately, this aspect is minor compared to these two obnoxious design choices: [list] [*] [b]Fake Walls:[/b] Some critical parts of progression in the game is hidden behind 2-3 breakable walls hidden in random corners of the ASCII-TXT world with zero visual cues. It is the same artificial padding found in the original NES Zelda game, and it seems more obnoxious here because it feels designed to coerce the player into buying the games 2 dollar guide. [*] [b]Rage-Bait:[/b] This game is littered with items that are either straight annoyances, or items that grant buffs with very annoying downsides (like requiring precise sword angles to move between squares). At times, this is a charming aspect of the game that is a bit funny, but there are multiple instances where I feel it has no place and ruins the games flow. The most blatant one is the ending of the game where you control a worm-version of yourself that has intentionally unresponsive controls designed to mess you up over and over. This 2-3 minute ending segment of the game is instead an 8 minute slog because you have to fight the controls to make them do what you want. It ruined the flow of the ending, and the already unsatisfying ending made this rage-bait seem pointless. [/list] [h2] Conclusion [/h2] I don't completely hate this game: I streamed it to a friend, and collaborating to figure out the puzzles together was a good social experience. As the one controlling the actual game, playing it was a massive pain in the butt. You will not find the well-crafted and tight execution of Frog Fractions here. There are interesting individual pieces but they do not come together into a satisfying whole. I would not recommend playing this game, and I don't think I'd even recommend watching someone else do it due to how arbitrary the whole experience is.

Is a relaxing city sim - not something I would play but I can see the beauty on it.

I won't say anything other than you will need a microphone peripheral from the hit game rock band 3 in order to experience this in its full glory. There are next to no games that I leave a review that's as short as this, but look, you're going to be playing this game if you already know about frog fractions so I feel like you should know what you're in for by purchasing this game so saying this is a requirement should be enough of a selling point here. You won't regret it unless you're not a fan of clever puzzles.

Love It! I wonder if the real frog fraction was the fairies we killed along the way

My brain cannot even comprehend what has happened, first being stressed out by fairies and then having a fractural trip through my kingdom. 10/10 would vibe with it again

I actually quite liked Frog Fractions 2. But it is in the style of a MUCH older game. The minigames were a lot of fun in my opinion, and this game was my hyperfixation for a while.

Never have I found a title so... [spoiler]alliterative[/spoiler]... yet so grounded in [spoiler]the first third of the alphabet[/spoiler]..... if only there were more games like that://

this is FIRE