Recursed

Finishing this game felt like I had just finished eating a delicious meal, the kind that makes you say "my compliments to the chef". It's nothing mindblowing, really, and I don't think this is by any means my favourite puzzle game of all time (that's still [i]Void Stranger[/i]). But it is simply an excellent experience! This game does a lot of things I like; the puzzles are all great (a lot of them have this cool structure where they'll teach or use some fundamental trick in the first half, and then make you find some weird exploit using it in the second), the ending is clever, there's this subplot where you get audio logs of a charming british man who effectively played the game before you which could have easily been a little too self-conscious but was actually quite well written, I kept saying things like "huh" and "what the hell?" and "oh I see! no, wait a minute". If I have one gripe it's that I solved some of the puzzles by what felt like random floundering around; sometimes you can just eliminate every possibility that clearly leads directly to a softlock and then do whatever's left. But it's not as if that isn't still fun and interesting in itself! No individual puzzle has that many components but if you don't go in with a solid plan you quickly end up accidentally building these massive labyrinths of nested identical-looking chests. It's a good time.