The most unique and memorable dungeon crawler I’ve played in a good while. The game is one huge parody of 90s PC RPGs complete with random unexplained game mechanics, constant mentions of various written material you have to actively read outside of the game, dialogue with like every NPC and a surprising amount of lore and world building. The map design is chaotic and random and it’s incredibly easy to get lost, but with the amount of content in the game getting lost basically means finding another entirely different part of the game to explore. It’s advertised as having 600 hours of content on the creator’s website, and though that’s a obvious overstatement I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some random thing tucked away in one specific corner of one of the maps that actually has 600 hours of content. The game just feels that arbitrarily huge, and I still have ways to go to find everything despite getting one of the endings. The visuals are amazing as well. thecatamites’ games always look visually interesting and this one I especially love. The blend between 2D art and animations with 3D environments is something I experienced a lot in his newer games and it’s still just so good. Gameplay wise I can imagine a lot of people not liking this, but if you want gameplay thecatamites games are the last place to look anyway. Overall it’s fire, I need to go on a thecatamites marathon sometime.

Amazing game, seems like one of those incoherent surreal nonsense "just walk around and see what you find" games at first glance but the fact there's actually a small amount of genuine lore and worldbuilding here made me so much more interested to see what I'd find next than I otherwise would have been; it's a surreal incoherent mess, sure, but the locations all feel like actual places and not just a collection of randomly-assorted colorful shapes. Absolutely loved playing this, I enjoyed it way more than I expected to.

You step forward, caress the goblet with one hand before stuffing it into your satchel where five others have already been tucked away, confident in your ability to double, even triple that count throughout this dungeon.
A blown-out voice echoes through the chamber "G̵̳̐O̷͎̕B̶̺͒L̸̜͆E̴͉͝T̵͎͒."
You step down the hallway, barely making out the form of a creature as it lurches towards you, intent on eating you alive like the prey animal you are. You draw your sword and - anticipation - lunge, piercing the heart of the creature, your hilt and hand coated in blood.
A blown-out voice echoes through the chamber "K̴̜͍̥͉̮̦̬̭̲̣̅͑͋͋̂̌̀̋̎̏̚I̴̠͕̅̾̉̀͆̅̅̾̉̀̋͗̚̕L̴̯̗̭̆̃͝L̶̨̡̛͇̞̩͍̠̟͉͗̇͌̑͂̌̈́͐̍̾͛͂̓͐͜."
You take your hunting knife in hand and kneel over the body, piercing the flesh again, this time cleaner, more precise, rhythmic, to cut rations for the coming journey.
A blown-out voice echoes through the chamber "M̵̧̛̟̬̗̙͓͇̜̣̳̻͙̥̟͖̊̒̈͊̽̀́̒̓͊̕̚͠Ě̸̤̩̟͙̱̻̦͕̾͠A̴̙̥̟͕͍̥̔̏̒̄͋̎̈́̒̕͝͝T̷̟̣̲͓̖͈̹̤̮̈́́͑͑."

I'm going through all the short itch.io games on my list of games to play and getting them played, because The List needs to be under 500 games or I will die. Anyhow I ended up playing this thing for about a whole hour, despite youtube telling me it takes ten minutes to complete. I didn't even complete it.

This rules. I don't know how seriously I should take it, as the game is steeped in what can come off as absurdist slapstick and humour. But nonetheless, it is inscrutable and surreal and mildly infuriating and sort of creepy in all the ways I love for games to be.

Also in the game you have to eat meat constantly to not get depressed and I find that extremely relatable.