The Ramsey

A "light" Metroidvania that can be finished in 4 to 6 hours, it also qualifies as a puzzle-platformer, as many screens involve platforms, blocks and mechanisms that require wise use of all the guns and their effects. The first and most used gun is very fun, as the cotton bullets become jumping pads that allow to jump higher and climb walls where they can stick, including enemies. Acquiring all four guns, represented as elemental flowers, and learning to manage them is very satisfying. Oddly, the fifth flower is just a double jump. Maps are fairly small, most of them have one or two entrances to mini-challenges to collect the Boltnuts, necessary to craft inventions with helpful effects, provided you found their blueprints. In another odd and funny choice, sometimes the relatively most challenging sections lead to stamps, whose only effect is to give more cute symbols to apply on maps when marking interesting spots to remember. Hardcore Metroidvania fans will chew through this easily. Even if I found the puzzles really fun, beside a few screens there isn't much challenge; I also had no trouble getting the blueprints and Boltnuts to craft all inventions. However, some may like that achievements are strictly locked behind the (relatively) Hard(er) mode, and there are even a few for completing the game without ever making inventions and getting heart upgrades. The controls are very responsive but not super-tight, but as the platforming is very forgiving most of the time, I can overlook that. Pixel art and music are very nice, although I wish there was more variety of enemies, and many of them are very generic. It's a really cute game and, despite the protagonist being a squirrel, the design is such that he looks like a hamster and doesn't seem too different from actual hamsters encountered during his adventure. While the story is serviceable (the twist can be seen coming from miles away), I liked the way it is framed, as Ramsey narrating how he got into the situation he is at the beginning, making clear his adventures are not over. Far from a masterpiece but not to be slept on either.