Pretty cool! Mechanics wise, it's pretty much Minecraft parkour mechanics except with better bouncing and worse ladders. Everything controls pretty consistent, except the poles/ropes/shafts that my character always lets go at random no matter how hard I'm pressing the crouch key. It does have that Getting Over It game design of losing all your progress in a single jump, so it's in no way accessible and that's a shame because the environment is really pretty and the music is good too before you've listened to all 2-5 tracks.

The horror aspect... It's kinda cool that it's there, but it doesn't really work for me 100%. Like, it's REALLY unlikely that you're going to get enough vertigo playing the game normally to make the creepy things have a decent chance of spawning. It's kinda scary when you intentionally look for it the first time, but it's very simple so it gets old after two or three times. Which I'm thankful for, I think keeping it as scary atmosphere with a shadow guy once in a while (which seems to be different for every player or playthrough!) is a really good way to go at it. But it's kinda doomed to not land right - be too aggressive and the horror distracts you from the already nightmarish jumps, be too mild and... well, the game as it is currently.

Tried my hardest to enjoy this game on multiple occasions but it's just not going to happen. The visuals and music are all the same style as Middens and Gingiva, but this one simply doesn't click with me.

Making a beat-em-up in RPG Maker is a bad idea both in theory and in practice. Hitboxes are aligned to the center of the sprites and sprites are flat. That combined with the surreal environments makes it hard to even hit your opponent, and the choice to have a glossary in the game's manual instead of making it more accessible doesn't bode well now that battles are in real time. Like Middens it's impossible to tell if you're unprepared for a battle until you're almost dead, and the "just look at the enemy's colors to determine weakness" doesn't work with this art style.

The flow of play is broken further if you stop to look for items with the mouse, which I hear is necessary for the secret ending (don't quote me on that, I didn't get anywhere close to the end). As much as I like the kitty phone's interface, it's painfully slow to navigate. The hit list is confusing enough due to the lack of information, and it's even more of a chore if getting to that screen takes 5+ seconds of menuing.

Really didn't like this one. Abundant style isn't good when it makes the actual gameplay less enjoyable. Maybe I'll pick it up someday and enjoy it and change his review to match, but that certainly isn't anytime soon. At the very least the devs didn't run away with kickstarter backers' money, but that's the most praise I can give.

Also, the creator is still a creep.

Aside from some confusion about where you start on the map and some collisions the game didn't warn me about until I had already crashed, this game is really solid and I had a blast getting through it! Even though your only real environment is the inside of the sub, it really does feel like you're immersed in an alien moon from the atmosphere and the little glimpses you get through the camera. I wish the final scare was as good as some of the other anomalies you get to see, it's a bit lame in comparison.

The best out of all the Analgesic games. The 2D visuals retain the 16-bit quirkiness of the first Anodyne, and the 3D environments bring a nice PS1 feeling of loneliness and simplicity.

The story is a bit predictable, but the character interactions are what make it. The second half of the game is really strong, with the secret ending tying things up nicely and leaving you wanting for more.

My only critique is that, like the PS1 games it was inspired by, some of the environments feel kinda barren. This is somewhat fixed by metacoins on the second half (they even show up out of bounds!) but it's still not enough of an incentive in my opinion. Some spots just scream secret collectible, makes you wonder if something was cut out late in development.

I didn't really care for the Anodyne 1 references in the post game, but that's probably because I don't like the first Anodyne all that much to begin with. Maybe someone who enjoyed it more than me will find them at least neat.

Rune Factory's first (and second to last, for now) trip to the big screen looks gorgeous. The characters feel somewhat more alive than some other titles in the series, the combat is simple and satisfying, farming fine enough and the main story is interesting - though a bit short for my liking.

My only real complaint is that the runey sistem gets messy really fast if you're not playing attention, with most of your in-game days being dedicated to mantaining the ecosystem. And you don't even get the full rewards for it, since a bug makes you get no bonuses at all if you have all areas in balance. If emulating, I recommend looking up the cheat that keeps all areas balanced. You're not gonna get the growth time bonuses, but it makes the game way more relaxing and enjoyable.

Love the creature designs in this game! My favorites have to be the cylinder servants, they look so ominous and distinct and I love the fusion of human + human technology with the obscured faces. The story was pretty straightforward but there's a lot of room to interpret the cylinder metaphor. I kinda wish they stopped asking me to go find 3 things sooner, though. Also, I did not know this game was procedurally generating environments for a while, and I always felt like I was doing something wrong when I found an incubator but no eggs or vice versa.

Really solid game! Nothing too innovative in terms of platforming mechanics, but what is there is explored pretty well.

Most of the puzzles are based on figuring out where to go instead of execution, which helps for possible lag that you might have when playing this over the internet. That doesn't change the fact that those lag-dependent puzzles are there though, and it really spoils the experience sometimes.

Most of them are secret levels, but despite the lag issues I think those are handled pretty well! Self contained chambers with not too much going on so you can really delve into the physics (gets wonky for some of them though).

One thing I don't really like are the enemies. Sometimes it feels like they're just there to fill screen space, and the puzzles where they're an integral part of it suck a bit (the very last puzzle). It's manageable for most of the game as they start out just following a set path, but later levels have them follow the players and the unpredictability of their targeting AI makes it more of a gamble attempt than a strategy.

The visuals are a mixed bag. Some of them are too minimalist for my liking, but when they go all out with the different patterns and colors it becomes really nice to look at (and doesn't make platforming harder at all). I'm kinda sad they abandoned the factory concept they introduced mid game, I feel like that would be worth elaborating into the final level instead of just having the final challenge be... a thing.

The music was kind of a mixed bag too; I wouldn't say there's any bad tracks, but a lot of them are very unmemorable. Some of them get creepy and others melancholic, and when they're a hit they usually go with the visuals very well.

Overall a nice experience, but a flawed one.

This game is very interesting to me both gameplay wise and story wise. It's a pretty good mix of functional and modular building style, I rarely encountered bugs with the room detection system (aside from making fishing cages). Most of my troubles were with intentional features that are not communicated very well to the player, like how room height is determined by the door position and how wall hangings need to be on or below two blocks. My other big issue would be how difficult it is to figure out the settlement boundaries, especially on the isle of awakening. I can see some people getting fed up with basically going through the tutorial 4 times for each of the 4 major chapters, but I didn't mind it.

Aside from technical issues and some puzzling design choices, the building gameplay was very solid. It's a pretty good balance between modular and functional building. Some of the common issues I have with building and farming games were addressed pretty well here, even though not to the extent I would have liked. A lot of cool gameplay mechanics are introduced late in the game so you don't get a lot of time to mess with them until the post game. Probably for the same reason you're not really encouraged to build roofs.

I had never finished a Dragon Quest game before and never got close to the original trilogy, so I didn't catch on to most of the references until the very end. Without spoiling anything, I'd say this game messes with the source material (Dragon Quest 2) in a very interesting way. It's clearly a parody, but it doesn't make fun of the series in the way that feels cynical. It even uses some of the implications of a building game to make some interesting (but kinda shallow) points. If anything, it made me want to play actual Dragon Quest games so I can appreciate this game even more.