Oathbound

oathbound has some really, genuinely good ideas! it drops you into the middle of a field with almost no direction, no quest markers, and few immediately visible landmarks. what follows gave me more of a sense of wonder about what might happen next that you just don't get from a lot of modern, hyper-polished games, even in the indie scene a lot of the time. the environment is often kind of inconvenient in terms of the distance between landmarks, but i came to love that about oathbound. between the atmosphere, the pleasant music, and the inconvenience of the environment, i was left feeling sort of like i was exploring a real, physical space, as if the game were composed of small puzzles placed outside in an actual forest. the jumping puzzles themselves, too, have a noticeable lack of the "yellow paint" effect in modern games: occasionally i was unsure whether my solution was even intended. that's another feeling that works well with the experience in this case, i think! i'm excited to see what legend games decides to do next! i hope that some of the feelings i mentioned above stick around. in a lot of ways, slowly walking my way across oathbound's world felt more like an adventure than a lot of games do.

Although this game has its flaws regarding its collision, physics and music cuts, It was a nice casual adventure. Sprinkled with some light storytelling, platforming, puzzles and soothing music. A good time.