They started out with a high concept idea in 2019, and then spent seven years trying to ground it in "these are just normal people that can also fly." Back in 2020 or 2021 or whatever, you would fly around and wonder what happens to you at the end of Eden. You wondered if this was a post-apocalypse of warfare or environmental destruction, and how capes worked. The spirits were stuck in a past that was no longer there. Now their asses are selling you cosmetics and dyeing clothing. Nobody knows if there are living adult skypeople, and we missed out on a cool moment to meet one because it's all just normal now. The Sky kids used to be golems, but that Two Embers animation suggests they aren't, and suddenly they eat food. The subplots are just as unserious. The weird sky creature subplot in Season of Shattering felt like it was leading up to something and wecompletely phlubbed, and then they followed it up with the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Season of Moments where you just take photos.
They frame the genderless player character in one of the weirdest ways in gaming—the hardest assassination of an interesting genderless character outside of the Murderbot books. It went from "it/its genderless golem sent by god" to "quirked up androgyne" The haircuts make me seethe; you get ten girl-coded hairs, one boy-coded one, and one gag hair that sucks ass, and you are violently not allowed to feel special or unique. The hair of the default skykid is unique design-wise in that it feels a little alien and actually captures the vibe of the original skykid well.
The game has developed a Peter Pan syndrome, adult-child vibe that feels genuinely creepy. The game is obsessed with physical contact. The original hand-holding was fine, but then they tacked on the weird friend tree where you can't tell if someone is your homeboy or wants to date you. The "pet" feature is wild, and having to unlock a bridal carry just to get the double-stage bow is insane. Combine this childlike base model with a playerbase that demands to be stylish, and it creates a ridiculous uncanny valley creep factor. This obviously isn't intentional, but it's a side effect of the devs balancing "our player models look like children" with "our playerbase is adults who want to be stylish". Things like the onesie, the blue pantsuit from Season of Duets, and a few shorts options are designed to be innocent at face value but read as dubiously kind of overly adult in an odd way (I could be reaching here, but I think it's mostly a conflict of the original design with what players actually want out of it).
Everything insists on being some ♥♥♥♥♥♥ inside environment now. There are no more giant ruined trees, floating structures in the clouds, or massive crumbling infrastructure projects. Instead, they put us in ♥♥♥♥♥♥ apartments. They want the aura of being a commune but the order of being hypercapitalist. They introduced Aviary Village, which is absurdly bad; Animal Jam's Jamaa Township felt more cohesive. They took the old Home area and ruined it with detritus, got rid of the charming message boats, and replaced them with a random dude in a boat selling ♥♥♥♥ and loitering event spirits. They also aggressively cater to Chinese players with Lunar New Year events that used to be dope but have been ass for years. There isn't a single good argument for Season of Duets existing either. It's aesthetically vile, lore-breaking, and the IAPs are unappealing and not exclusive.
The scale is whack, and the game tries so hard to avoid anything sharp. Literally nothing can have any weight to it ever. You have to navigate tight-ass spaces with controls that feel like a main battle tank made out of aerogel. The whole game is absurdly easy, and the only challenging parts, like the Trial of Fire, are hard just because of tedium and jank. You can bypass it entirely by holding hands and running through the darkness because your recharge outpaces the damage. They keep leaning into the instrument stuff, but the mechanics are dreadfully shallow, extremely laggy, stuck in one key, and trapped in a weird 5ths interval grid that adapts to the world around you for some reason, so a song you can play in one spot becomes unplayable in another. The sheet music UI is awful for anyone who plays rhythm games or wants to play anything fast, and for some reason doesn't use chords.
And then there's Eden. It gets killed by horrible desync issues. Out of 10 to 20 runs, I've only been able to finish it with a friend once. Honestly, Eden is more emotionally resonant solo anyway. You spend the whole game around other people, and then you get told, "nobody is coming for you, you need to do this, it's one direction, and you aren't coming back." That hits really hard.
OOBs
Outside of Minecraft and Half-Life, this is the game with the most stupid ass glitch-hunting potential. The OOB areas are cooler aesthetically than the coded stuff. The best spots:
The giant solid Leviathan at the bottom of Treasure Reef you can get stuck in.
Clipping out of the big pot in Starlight Desert to see the entirely empty cloud world.
Getting into the Office dev studio without a cape.
The enormous green plain above the boat tunnel.
The sealed-off jellyfish cave.
The floating and windy cubes in Aviary.
The game has been turned into a digital shopping mall and labubu collectathon. consider doing literally anything else with your time (unless you're completely sunk costed into it like I am : /
