LOVED this game.

The leitmotif is wonderful. Have had it stuck in my head since I started playing and now still after. Various variations pop in randomly. I'm humming along.

Beautiful expressive platforming. You are pretty quickly doing some wild stuff. It's really good at unlocking your platformer potential for you. I don't have to look up how to double jump off Cappy to get to secrets, the wild shit is just baked in and gradually taught. And yeah you can still do the wild shit for secrets because it's a platformer. As it should be.

Every key species link story moment is absurd. Resounding, thoughtful, intriguing. Feels like a culmination of years of itch style storytelling in games.

I've never played an Analgesic game before despite being very interested in how Anodyne 2 looks, but Sephonie stood out to me as a puzzle platformer and looking just weird enough to be up my alley.

Any fellow Canadians reading this, if you remember the "Short Circuitz" clips that used to play during commercials on YTV back in the day, this game feels and sounds like that. It really nails the bizarre, dreamscape setting of the island and the music evokes that N64 keys/synth style that is so familiar to a lot of us that it tickles that special little spot in the back of your brain - that weird little sad nostalgia zone that causes certain emotions. Like exploring an empty Super Mario 64 level or lonely Ocarina Of Time dungeon. The track that plays during the puzzle bits especially gives me that specific feeling - it feels so familiar and lonely.

This game is made exclusively by 2 people and I give them loads of credit where its due - the imaginative ways it displays its world and the creative story and writing that broadens the characters, their past, and their connection to the island, really makes this a great piece of art.

The game does feel clunky during certain platforming/wall-running sections, and I found myself failing to do things that felt like it wasn't my fault, but the game itself. You'll run at a wall at the exact angle you need to and jump onto it and it just won't work sometimes. The running itself takes some getting used to, and you'll find yourself speeding off the edge many times. BUT when it works, and when it clicks, and you're pulling off really awesome platforming and using your brain to reach nooks and crannies, it feels great. I applaud a team of 2 people that can make tricky platforming work at all.

Sephonie is a game that feels like it could use a bunch of gameplay polish to make it shine that much brighter, but at the end of the day it shines in its own special way. Truly unique and aspirational game design, presentation and writing.

Another great Analgesic Productions game. I found the controls kind of finicky, but it's such an amazingly creative platformer, the game makes you string together moves in very creative ways, and the levels always felt so natural, reaching a place felt like a discovery instead of you just completing a trial.

The abstract visuals and melancholic surrealism are also in full force here, but this time there's a more concrete, more "real-world issues" story that I found really poignant. Loved to learn more about these characters, and the themes let me pondering for a while.

As always, very excited for whatever comes next.

Overall, Sephonie is a delightful experience and feels unique and well-crafted. I think it falls short somewhat, due to issues with the movement mechanics and some clunky-ish dialogue. But even in those areas, I would say it's more that that they're good but not great, especially in comparison to other games in a similar category.

Before I expand on the flaws, I wanna just mention the really good bits. The enviroments are wonderful and really sell the setting (along with the music, which is fantastic), and the plot is heartfelt, thoughtful, and has some cool ideas. I especially loved all the creatures they came up with for you to link with - I found myself wishing a lot of them were real, haha. And despite the issues with the mechanics, the level design nonetheless feels tight and focused, and the linking puzzles were always fun without being too difficult.

As for my criticisms - my issues with the dialogue were really just that a lot of it felt awkward or clumsy (and not like, in an intentional way) - just in need of refining. I feel I should emphasize that it's still much better than most games - depsite the flaws, I found myself really invested in the characters and rarely felt the urge to just skip through any of the text. But it definitely felt a bit lackluster.

As for the control issues, this one is a little more nuanced. The wallrunning is a great idea in theory and in practice it mostly works. But I find that the natural-looking environments really harm readability and navigability. It's hard to figure out what angle to hit a curved wall, and its hard to tell when the curved wall will get "too curved" and you'll fall off, and if the wall is curving away from the camera, its hard to even see where you're wallrunning to. This problem extends a little to platforming in general - sometimes the collision is matched to oddly shaped walls or platforms and they just feel unnecessarily funky to move around on. I also had some control issues with the dash not working as expect but at this point I'm probably just rambling lol. That said, none of these were a huge issue for beating the main game, just because they never require you to be too perfect to get past anything. I definitely noticed it but I could live with it. It did get to be a real problem after I beat the game and went for the bonus challenges, though - I still did a lot of them, but others I completely gave up on just because of the control issues I was having. Which is not a huge deal since they're optional, its just unfortunate because the controls are interesting enough that I really want to fall in love with them.

So, bottom line - I strongly recommend playing it unless you're super picky about smooth movement or dialogue writing. Melos and Marina have done a great job crafting a beautiful little game, despite its flaws.

It's intelligent and spiritual. The biological snippets of each creature, their ecological place... it's all very good and heartfelt, as with the spirit telling the story. It's just too corny, too timid, the story too direct and exposition-filled.

I'm not quite sure what's wrong. It's not lacking in confidence, but in asking me if I want to turn off mechanics frequently, it feels uncommitted. Would children like this? It just doesn't work for me. Maybe I just don't like platformers, or tetris.