one of my favorite doom wads of all time. this whole map is heavily inspired by the book "house of leaves", which i haven't read so i can't give my piece on that. myhouse is a creepy and liminal subversion of the "myhouse" wad concept, where you descend deeper and deeper through twisted versions of the titular house. the music is amazing, starting off with the track "running from evil" from the first level of doom II, and slowly distorting it with key changes and missed notes as you progress through the first couple parts of this map. eventually, when you start on one of several paths, the music abruptly turns into a beautiful ambient track that fits perfectly with the unfolding world inside of this house. the textures and doomcute looks very nice, not the best i've seen in a wad but still it's obvious there was effort put into even the normal parts of this map. there's not much here in terms of gameplay, other than the big final fight which is a relatively manageable slaughtermap style confrontation, which can mostly be taken care of by forcing enemies to infight. still, the point of this map is clearly not to set new standards in terms of gameplay. this map is incredible and absolutely deserved the cacoward. go play it for yourself.

easily my favorite celeste map pack. music is phenomenal, art is beautiful, and almost every level is great as well (except fucking dropzle).
the intro cutscene for the prologue is particularly beautiful, almost makes me forget i'm playing a community made map
i haven't fully completed the grandmaster lobby here, because this shit is brutally difficult. but this is absolutely worth playing no matter what skill level, given the amount of variation in difficulty. my biggest gripe with this is the amount of damn puzzle maps! i'm sure some people like them, but i am way too stupid to spend my time playing these. i finished a couple puzzle maps legit, cheesed dropzle by falling through the pixel perfect gaps, and just looked up a walkthrough for most of the rest..
the nice thing is that there is no barrier to progression here, other than the heartsides you can play any map in any lobby no matter how many levels you have completed before. if you are confident in your skills you could skip straight to grandmaster if you want. there's also a gym for each of the lobbies that goes over all tech that is required for any level in that lobby.
either way, fantastic mod

greatest metroidvania game of all time in my opinion, and definitely in my top five games of all time. the artwork is beautiful and incredibly detailed with each area having very different but equally beautiful art. the sound design is satisfying and the soundtrack is one of my favorites in any game. the story is not very clear for most of the game, and if you want to learn more about the world it will not come automatically through playing the game. you need to explore and find information through environmental storytelling mostly as opposed to direct dialogue about the story. the movement is not particularly in depth, although it's satisfying and clean. given that it's a metroidvania you gain movement abilities throughout your playthrough, including a dash, walljump, and double jump. all of these interact very smoothly with the combat, which is mainly focused around usage of a sword, called a nail. the main healing method in this game is through the "focus" ability, which uses up your "soul" meter that is refilled by hitting enemies. you can learn spells, which use the soul meter and can deal massive damage, and you can learn nail arts which take time to charge up but can deal more damage with more range than the normal nail swings. all of these abilities flow together to create my personal favorite combat system of any 2d platformer game. exploration is a large part of the game, meaning that it's pretty non-linear. there are certain areas you will need to go to to complete the game, that contain certain things you need to progress, but a large portion of the world is not necessary to beat the game, at least not the easiest ending. the game has five different endings, which i won't go into here, but all of them are achievable if you try hard enough.
you can gain the game's currency, geo, by killing enemies or finding chests and rocks with geo in them. this can be used in various shops around the map to purchase charms, items, and upgrades. it can be also used to buy and update a map, which fills in as you explore each area. this is helpful because backtracking through areas is a massive part of post game and even main game content.
the bosses in this game are easily some of the best in any 2d game that i've played, and most of them have unique and interesting patterns to learn. there are 46 bosses in the main game at the time of review, including dlc. (all dlc is free). boss fights are when the combat in hollow knight truly shines, as you can use every trick in your arsenal against one massive opponent.
one issue i have with the game is the lack of boss health indicators, which makes it pretty difficult to track your progress in the harder boss fights. another smaller annoyance is the amount of unskippable cutscenes, including the end credits which (as far as i remember, might have been patched) are not skippable or exitable and if you alt f4 during the credits it's possible you could lose your progress in the final boss fight. those are not major complaints though, and there is a mod for boss health bars. speaking of mods, there are many modded boss fights and character skins that are available to download, and some of them are very high quality.
i have spent over a thousand hours in this game at the time of review, and gotten all achievements + beaten all extra content. this is one of the greatest games ever made in my opinion.
it's also only like fifteen bucks so buy it !!

fast paced action gameplay with great music and chaotic art, definitely up there with my favorite games of the year. i know it's heavily inspired by wario land but i've never actually played a wario game so idk.
i haven't fully completed this game, but i have beaten the main game. the only actually slightly difficult part of beating the game is the bosses, almost all the levels i beat first try. there is a scoring system and i know there are achievements for getting p ranks, so i'm sure ill be going back to those. i like the idea of a run through of each level before getting to the end, triggering the rock dude and racing back through to beat the timer, especially when new paths and routes open up. i don't have much else to say about this one as i haven't played it that much but i'll definitely go back to it at some point