Little Nemo and the Guardians of Slumberland

A very charming metroidvania with fun platforming and great exploration. The visuals are cute and the music is excellent. It's got an unusual but effective healing mechanic where you can heal yourself using "moons" that are found in the levels or by killing enemies. Having the moon meter filled even at full health acts as an additional buffer, as you instantly get healed when you get hit. This also ties into the dynamic difficulty mechanic if you play on the harder difficulty. The better you do and the more moons you collect without getting hit, the more your moon meter rises and the harder the enemies get, but the rewards are also greater. I played on the easier difficulty mode as I wanted a relaxing and cozy experience, and this totally delivered that. It just oozes charm all the way through. The domains are well designed, with plenty of hidden nooks and crannies, branching paths and shortcuts, and loads of collectibles. These include PJs and Toys that grant you special abilities, music tracks for the music player, lucky shards that boost your HP, and blue moons. The blue moon system is quite unique. Blue moons are hidden collectibles that you find 20-30 of in every domain, and you need 10 of them to unlock fast travel. This is a clever system, as it makes you explore each place thoroughly and use shortcuts and different routes for moving around before relying on fast travel, which you only unlock later. Additionally, clearing a domain's main story unlocks previously blocked paths and encourages you to explore the area again before leaving. My only complaint here is that getting beyond 10 blue moons in each domain is purely for completionist purposes, with no rewards attached to it except Steam Achievements. It would've been nice to have some cool upgrades or at least cosmetic rewards for getting more blue moons. The map is really great, and it automatically logs the location of all collectibles, NPCs, unexplored leads, and other features like breakable blocks and one-way paths. Additionally, the game lets you explore most domains right off the bat after completing the first one, but it does have a fixed order that it encourages you to follow as the easiest one. This makes it simpler for players who want a more guided experience, although you can break into much harder domains earlier if you're up for the challenge. The bosses are also well designed. Unlike many other metroidvanias, it's not a war of attrition here. Instead, the bosses only have 3 HP, with one HP for each of three phases. You have to figure out how to survive the boss's wave of attacks and then retaliate with an attack of your own. It's similar to bosses in many platformers. There are also no runbacks, as save points are provided very close to boss fights. Finally, I also really appreciate the "Game Genius" feature, which gives you the general location of secrets that you've not yet found once you beat the game with the true ending. It made getting 100% completion a lot more manageable. While most of this review was positive, I do have a few gripes here: 1. As mentioned above, there is no reward for getting beyond 10 blue moons in a domain. 2. There are a few minor bugs in the game, like Flip's 8-ball icon getting stuck, the banner at the top with the area name getting stuck until you trigger another one or go to bed, blue moon counts for a domain not showing sometimes, and the pogostick having an inconsistent jump height. One of the boss fights also got stuck for me once, although restarting it fixed that. There was also a case of regular crashes in one area, but the dev has fixed that one by now. 3. Two of the domains didn't have any boss fights, which was pretty disappointing as boss fights are a highlight of metroidvanias. Instead, they had "boss rooms", where you got locked in a room with a bunch of regular enemies that were super easy to beat. 4. The dodge in the game is awful, as it requires you to block first for half a second and then do the dodge. Because of this, I found myself mostly relying on just the block and rarely using the dodge. The block also has a bit of endlag, so quickly blocking, unblocking, and throwing the yoyo is rather unreliable in boss fights. 5. The currency recovery mechanic is annoying. When dying, a particular character keeps half of your candy and gives you the remaining half. The thing is, you can also deposit all your candy with him for safekeeping, so I found myself always doing this before boss fights to avoid losing any candy. Since I mostly just died in boss fights, this was just unnecessary friction for me. Additionally, this character only unlocks a shortcut containing a few collectibles after he makes 1000 candy off of your deaths. Since I only died sparingly and always deposited my candy in advance, I was nowhere near that amount, so I had to deliberately die while holding a ton of candy to get him to unlock it. It just seems like a really bizarre system to lock a shortcut and collectibles behind dying a bunch of times. 6. Some sections of the game have fetch quests, and while holding these items, you're unable to do most of your moves, which made them quite annoying. To make it worse, sometimes ghosts chase you the entire way back, and you have to constantly dodge them while being nearly helpless. It's made much easier with a PJ you get in the late game that makes you invincible, but then the entire challenge is gone and only the tedium remains. Still, I had a really great time with this game. Despite my gripes, none of them were major enough to detract from how charming and fun the game is. The exploration, platforming, collectibles, and bosses are all well done, and I appreciate how much the game respects the player's time with things like the excellent map and convenient boss checkpoints. If you're looking for a relaxing metroidvania with a strong focus on exploration, I definitely recommend giving this one a shot.