I feel genuinely very proud of myself for finishing this game! When I started it I was nervous that I would hate the overworld but after a short while it became the reason I wanted to complete more levels, so I could do more of those lovely little puzzles. I would happily play an entire game of that overworld (I'm guessing I need to play one of the top down zelda games then), I thought the change of pace worked really nicely against the intense platforming levels, they complimented eachother well and helped me appreciate just how well designed this game is. I think the only problem with the game really is the fact that the Impossible Lair section of the game is such a huge spike in difficulty compared to the rest of it, I get that it's supposed to be 'impossible' and all that but it felt like the difficulty increased as the game goes along and then absolutely skyrockets at the end. I felt genuinely angry playing the impossible lair level at times which is not how I felt at any other point of the game, and I don't know if I like that! This is such a joyful experience and then at the end I felt like screaming. It just felt incongruent with the rest of the game I think, even if it was satisfying when I finally beat it! But yeah this game still definitely deserves the high rating I'm giving it, if they released a whole load more levels I would 100% play them!!!!!!

This is getting 5 stars for everything except the gameplay, which is very good, but towards the end some of the sequences where you are navigating the world as Jenny become a little clunky and drawn out. The strength of everything else for me means that this charming little game deserves the full five stars, the voice acting is wonderful and the whole thing just oozes with charm, and I just totally vibed with where the mystery went! and there was a character called David Lunch so yeah, 5 stars :)

Marking this as finished today because I only did the colour dungeon today, but I started this last saturday and finished it on tuesday. This was my first proper 2D Zelda game (I've played some of Spirit Tracks) and well, I think that this is one of my favourite games I've ever played. While I was playing this I turned into a dungeon solving beast. I was playing through the overworld as fast as possible to get to the next dungeon, so I could blast through it as fast as possible to get to the next overworld puzzle so i could blast through it go get to the next...

The puzzles are rarely that difficult but they almost always make you feel like a genius for solving them, and as someone who really likes reassurance it felt great to have a game make me feel smart when I solved a puzzle. I found the loop of it all incredibly addictive and I didn't want it to end, but I also wanted to beat the game. It felt strange. I loved the dream setting of the game, any reference to the Wind Fish had me screaming and crying. there are some minor things in this game that are a little bit irritating but I'm not going to think about them because I loved it so much. I'm going to play A Link to the Past soon...

I liked this game a lot. I completely missed the first two puzzles and had to do them at the end (it was a requirement for the game to be over), and doing them at that point felt pretty unnecessary which affected the pacing quite significantly. Now I know that I was the one that missed the puzzles but, if your game opens with a message saying 'this narrative experience doesn't hold your hand' but you still make it a requirement to do certain things in the game, despite those things being pretty easy to miss (at least they were for me) I think that is quite a big problem! I don't know what the solution is, I would've been happy if you could miss every puzzle that it was possible to just walk by, then if you're really fucking confused by the ending, you just play it again and then hopefully end up finding what you missed, or you stay confused, after all you were warned at the beginning that this was a narrative experience that doesn't hold your hand!!!! I know that all I've said so far has been critical really but it's because I really, really liked this game. I thought the puzzles were strange and engaging, if a little obtuse sometimes. My favourite puzzle was definitely the house one where you had to memorise the layout of a house, that was awesome! I really liked the way the location felt a mixture between very real and believable and also totally uncanny. I heard that this game was influenced by Twin Peaks but not in a way that is purely referential, and I think that is true! I could be talking less vaguely about this game but I would like to avoid spoilers because I actually really liked where this story went. I'd like to play more games like this. :)