It's all about the mood.

Animal Well, to me, really distinguished itself with its atmosphere. The almost total absence of music, replaced by a myriad of sounds and wobbles. The sparkling colors and dancing smoke effects moving across the scan-line post process. The weird animal designs and encounters where random otters can jump on screen to mess with your plans.

It also has very interesting power-ups which are all thematically consistent as a toolkit and really creative in how they shape your relationship to the environment.

It's a bit of a bummer that the game offers almost no tools to hunt down all the remaining secrets once the game is over. I would have loved to get to the true ending, but there's no way I'm scouring every inch of a gigantic map (where it's tough to fast-travel) with no pointers to get to that point.

It still is a fantastic little game for what it is and I'll mostly remember it for it's unique art direction and thick ambiance.

Bramble has a strange rhythm. It plays its cards very close to the chest for a long while, and keeps all its best moments for the very last quarter. I really thought I wasn't going to remember it much, but it truly brings out magical and awe-inspiring moments at an increasingly quickening pace as you move through its dark world.

It is close to something like "Little Nightmares", but it did feel a little barren for most of its run-time. The main gameplay verb is "holding the joystick to walk or climb". Being a very experiential game, it's what's going on in the background that matters more than your character walking, but it did lack a little something in the Game Design department.

It has a super dark and original universe though, which is where the game really stands out (and what makes you want to look at those backgrounds). The boss battles are also a huge standout. Some of them will be burnt in my mind forever.

Quite a powerful game in the end, even if it isn't perfect at all and a little shallow gameplay-wise.

Oh and can we agree that Olle is a terrible player character? Such a gross little "cabbage-patch kid" looking boy. Liked what they did with his model throughout the game, but not the character. It might just be a me thing though !

What a fantastic and creative horror game.

I can't remember the last time my hands were so sweaty playing a game. Greener Grass Awaits has a bunch of genius little game design ideas that add up to a fantastic short game. And it's bone-chilling at that.

It is a bit too hard and can't quite find a way to balance scares and ease of play, but it's better than most horror games were a monster chases you around that can be fooled by running around a table.

Genre fusions rule.

Trying to play this right after Disco Elysium was a bad call.

I couldn't properly sink into it, although it really seems to require you're utmost devotion if you want to connect with it.

I'll play it again someday for sure.

I had a great time with the first "A Plague Tale" game !

Granted, it feels rough around the edges in a bunch of ways. Some tinier (overlapping voices in dialogues, some unbalanced gameplay mechanics) and some bigger (the game drags in the last half, the presentation and voice acting can be spotty).

But overall, the relationship of the main siblings works quite well ! It doesn't aim to be as deep and nuanced as a "Last of Us" and that's fine. It succeeds in what it's trying to do, and I cared way more than I thought I would about the cast.

The game is mostly puzzles rather than action sequences which I quite enjoyed, no matter how simple they were. They always had me thinking at least a little, and there's surprises until the very end which I didn't expect.

Although it's not the best game ever, it was a welcome little adventure that had some great, if clumsy ideas. Can't wait to see where the second one goes !

I stopped at the last mission simply out of spite.

Look, I played almost 25 hours of this, it had fun parts. Mostly, after the tedious first few hours, and before the mid point where stuff gets painfully repetitive (yes it's got that Ubi magic in there), there were some fantastic moments to be had.

The first encounter with the wilderness of Pandora is totally jaw-dropping. It is the best part of this game.

Simply put it's a game that spreads itself wayyy too thin, but has some fantastic visuals and exploration moments. But it's all over shadowed by the other lack luster elements and poor pacing.

Oh man I didn't write about the characters and narrative, huh ? IT'S BAD.

This is a big disappointment.

I really tried to get through it but couldn't endure it any more.

Penny's Big Breakaway has some fun ideas, but is mostly a tedious, repetitive and quite cheap-looking and feeling platformer.

Going off the back of something as stellar as Sonic Mania, I really expected at least an interesting game from this team's next effort. But this got mindless and boring way too fast... It asks you to go reallt fast to keep up a combo, but also to slow down and find secrets at the same time. The cutscenes and bosses have a really B-tier feel to them that I really didn't expect.

Anyways, you can still see a uniqueness in the ideas presented and the Dreamcast-era visual style. They just really need to focus the work on making a better designed game next time around. I just hope this game's shortcomings will serve as stepping stones for that.

Hands down one of my favorite games ever now that I've finished it.

I've never experienced a game that delved so deep, thoughtfully and intelligently in politics, addiction, the police, self-loathing, pain and a million other tangential topics.

It is erudite in its writing, and brilliant in its ludo-narrative consonance from the first sentence to the last. Most video games wish they had one character as compelling as anyone in Disco Elysium. And the game is packed full of standouts.

Truly a masterful piece of art made to be slowly savored and dissected to one's content.

LONG LIVE DISCO BABY !!