Still organising my thoughts, but the long story short is: I'm putting this game in my favourites list. I found it hard to put down the controller for the entire game. It delivers on exactly the premise and vibe you expect of it, and does the best thing possible, by underselling, and over-delivering.
This game, in a nutshell, is like the environments of Breath Of The Wild, but you're an increasingly more agile fox, sprinting (and more... the last unlockable ability (which I wont spoil) really brings a whole new beautiful experience to traversal of the world - one of those things that'll make you gasp a little the first time you use it. And they make it completely unlimited to use, which is perfect for this game, more on that in a sec.) around these beautiful landscapes. It's amazing to me that one person made this - Lucas Paakh I raise my emoji hands in praise of you.
The central hook of this game is the flow state you find yourself in, running around these truly gorgeous natural landscapes, with great atmosphere and music. It's a game I'm glad to own just for the simple purpose of knowing it's a world I can go into whenever, zoom around in fox form, as the lush vistas whip past me or beneath me. Probably a perfect game for a rainy day, but I played it on a fine day and it was great. I found this game surprisingly hard to put down for the entirety of its (for me) 5 hour run-time. 5 hours bearing in mind that it's endlessly revisit-able for that flow state and beautiful world, I left about 200 mushrooms uncollected, plenty satisfied with the experience I'd had. It's a pretty perfect transition into 3D for this beloved old flash series that has stuck in my mind for some 20 years preceding me buying this new addition. The original left an unwavering signature of enchantment in my young mind - and this game positively delivers on that.
I have some things that marginally weighed the experience down, that I'll just mention here as more or less objective issues (maybe they'll get patched, perhaps, but if not, a really lovely experience remains here), but these are reasonably speaking, part and parcel of a game made by one person and should definitely not discourage you from getting this game if you're interested. it's absolutely worth the full price in my opinion!
The game knows its central charm is running around a lush world as an agile, lightweight fox, and it sticks to it, and it makes it a great experience as a result. Not much gets in the way of it, in that sense, it just lets you run free, BOTW esque - but I do wish the game taught the player a little better at the start. In this game, you essentially have a 4-slot inventory, and you'll collect blue essences of different plants and animals. Breaking these stone pillars requires three particular blue essences and will unlock your movement upgrades, and also unlock other animals, so as to ensure some degree of sequencing through the game - it's definitely not a strictly linear experience in this sense though, which feeds into that freedom. I will say, they could have been laid out better to tighten up traversal in the late game (I think this game designed its world before its sequencing, if that makes sense), and some of the starting blue essences that are naturally occurring in the world were actually kind of rare. You'll be staring at a ton of sunflowers or something, but only one of them has the blue essence. It's not hard to see, the one you're looking for is blue, but it's the frequency at which these, the ferns, etc. occur in the world, while you're witnessing non-blue-essence versions of these same plants by the dozens, that makes it a little sub-optimal. You just wish you could get the blue essence from any of that plant, or at least, more of them. Having said that, it encourages exploration, and that's a lot of what this game thrives on, finding what's over mountain tops, in caves, underwater etc. As animals get more involved, some really cool little puzzles get involved with how to attain their blue essence - most of these are good, but a couple could have been clearer. I'm not sure what gets the birds to hand over their blue essence, I just chased them around til something happened. This is the occasional downside of a game that doesn't overly explain itself with text boxes. I'm glad they're not in the game at every turn, it's not in the spirit of this kind of game (which it sticks to commendably well), but some of these little animal puzzles could have been a bit clearer, or something. One thing I wish I saw more of though, was the feel you get when chasing the stag around the mountainous range. That chase, flowing around those high altitude hills, valleys on either side, wrapping around, it really zeroed into that flow-state feeling that the game thrives on in an interesting way. Preceding this there was no need for race-like attention to your steering. Not that this section is a race section, you can do it at any pace (this game is very chill/cosy like that), but I wish there were more 'chase' sections like this! It's not a problem though, just a little thing that I felt had a lot of potential. As it stands the game pretty much entirely fulfils its potential, though, so don't concern yourself with this paragraph too much.
I think that's all I have to say. This game is definitely worth the money in my experience, a real achievement by a solo developer, and a lush flow-state experience to be had running around a beautiful world. If you ever wanted to be a fox, but with slightly fantastical capabilities, like you're in a dream... this is the exact game for you. Environmentally speaking: It's pretty much Breath Of The Wild: Fox Edition, basically. What's not to love? Try it out! :)
