Much is to be said about not just encouraging, but forcing players through a near-identical second run in order to conclude its story. Critiques for this are completely valid, if not a little misled. This is not thee first game in its genre to pull this stunt, albeit not as well executed as others. But where its repeat run lacks in content, it makes up for it by recontextualizing tone. Not thee tone of its story, nor its horror, but in your tone. You know this house, you know these doors, you know (most of) these weapons. Your first run ends in tragedy, but you remember these halls, these puzzles, these answers, & maybe you can fix it. A silver coin might be silver all around, but each side yields a different answer; a potentially different fate.

Aesthetically perfect, mechanically stilted as good horror ought to be. A one-button heal-all can't exactly be excused, negating urgency of life. However, I urge you not to use it, if possible.

Fears not of its own secrets. No alternative playstyle or hidden level or walkthrough to reveal a sleight of hand. Quite thee opposite. Here, it's transparent of its own shocks & spooks & scares & unnerves. In fact, it goes so far as to proudly chisel a plastic plaque keeping numerical track of its own twists, encouraging players to see them all.

It's thee inverse of what I hold so dearly: mystery, unexplained. To have such confidence in these sometimes subtle, sometimes outlandish anomalies that thee developer is willing to forgo your curiosity in order to enjoy thee scares present is something I cannot condemn in thee slightest.

Rocking out is always possible even without any instruments at hand. You just gotta believe! or: Makeshift guitars through & through stir thee imagination. It's all in thee mind!

There is no denying thee simplicity of its charm. It's almost intoxicating how immediately easy it is to become 2D, grossly colorful popping reds & yellows, cool cool cool! You fly & spin, you jam & lam. Granted, to songs that aren't quite as infectious as its brotherly series, but with an equally endearing cast. Designs that strike as alien yet can somehow be drawn from memory after a single playthrough. Progression of character is stunted immediately after a familiar tutorial, which is soured with lateral learning. "It's all in the mind!" repeats in thee mind of Lammy to overcome fears, but flying, maternity, & putting out a ferocious building fire hardly feels in tune with what is deemed necessary in becoming a rockstar, opposite to what PaRappa aimed to achieve by thee end of his life-in-a-day journey.

Possibly oversimplifying each missions intent here, or maybe it's all in my mind.

Falters towards thee end, limping along losing a bit of its mystique by leaning too heavily on its own narrative rather than allowing its literal bone-chilling setting to do most of thee heavy lifting. Which, thankfully, that atmosphere does for a well majority of its runtime. Are you lost? You are lost.

Sharp corners, a seemingly endless sheet of a white void; trees that look the same; sled dogs that might very well turn on you without a second thought but never do; a friend you're unsure is a friend. Who are you? Are you you?

Of course you are, but you are lost.

Current personal best, 406.897

Masterclass in design. A general & vague term wholly applicable in every aspect from thee leaderboard crawl, heat-sensing enemy proximity radar, blitzed out uptick scoring system; superbly playful despite a rather oppressing & suffocating field. Thee offense to Devil Daggers defense.

Look no further than thee lobby if you want to bear witness to thee harmonious elegance present. A player finds themselves surrounded by birds fluttering about, surrounding your respectively-ranked dagger which, upon touching, commences thee onslaught. Hours of mastering & learning new tricks until you face thee boss, hours more to learn how to defeat an angel, & said angel will explode into a frenzy of docile birds, allowing your dagger to appear once again. Without breaking sequence, simply touch it to begin again.

My two main gripes with this game are minor, in a way. First of which is being at thee mercy of RNG. At times, snakes will spawn underneath spiders, scuttlers will spawn within snakes. Higher level playing depends on a quality route & when that becomes muddled at a dice roll, it can feel as though some runs are simply wasting your time. Secondly, there are a couple little inconsistencies in some mechanics. Scuttlers seem to have priority during a rail ricochet despite your target being dead center on a spawner, etc. Stomping feels like a crapshoot, particularly with snake heads. Seemingly damning strikes, but ultimately these do not ever really become a problem until you're fighting for milliseconds. Thankfully, some of these faults can be easily worked around with some smart improvisation, which this game allows for a plethora of.

A vicious Sisyphean cycle.

Fingertips frozen to thee bone; crimson in my boots bring warmth to my toes. Pressure from this metal sheeted stomach pounds away at my fractured skull & leaking through my ears. Hand pressed firmly against sweat of my forehead, & my legs are becoming increasingly limp. Chest pounding, heart beating violence, shutter pressed lightly. My eyes are covered - I cannot bear to look.

Likely could have been granted a couple more oddities such as easter-egg sites, randomized triggers, & another gameplay mechanic (elevation control). For what it's worth, however, it is an astonishing little slice of manual labor & aquatic horror.

Normal human errands, including, but not limited to: eating, making coffee, driving, petting wildlife, sledding, walking, hiking, playing meat as instruments, going to church, eldritch strawmen, dreaming, quenching the thirst of the talking head of a goat, using the toilet, burning your hand, unlocking doors with a small figure of your grandfather, shooting an old rifle, collecting hay, making a pact with the devil, getting impaled on an icicle, smoking a pipe, drawing, collecting honey, navigating an old bunker by using the sprites of dead soldiers, seeing reflections of ghosts in water, riding the bus, painting, drowning, being paralyzed with fear, getting stung by bees, drunken comrades, abominable snowmen, giving toilet paper to a man stranded in an outhouse, solving tactile puzzles, & staring at yourself in the mirror until your very own vessel of flesh becomes contorted beyond recognition you don't know yourself anymore your quest is all but finished do not let the dark take you listen to the bell of the headless goat follow the sound sign the pact do not sign the pact the soldiers are coming you must hide take shelter do not give up fire when ready, & sleeping!

Shortly after I graduated from high school, I had made the executive decision to implement a "gap year" in my linear life before entering college. During this year, I had to fill down time with sporadic decisions, woefully, in order to get the water in the mill of my mind turning. Often, I would peruse my neighborhood around midnight, moving various thoughts shooting around in my head from my mouth to a field recorder. Simple fleeting synapses of my brain remembering fonder times or merely speaking to break the silence (as I had less respect for such an absence at the time). I no longer have these recordings, but to this day, the only recollection in my mental possession of those jaunts was walking the exact path I had taken almost every day for years to get to the bus stop for school. Said route is now paired with the best & worst instances of being in high school, but one of history nonetheless. I still live in this neighborhood, & I remember the exact path to this day. Turn left from my house, then left at the end of the street, turn right, then an immediate left, then another right to arrive at my destination. Occasionally, I include this forsaken yet back-of-my-hand "bus route" as part of bike rides on my own volition, as to prove to myself that my life finally has the breadth to no longer be linear.

If you had any doubts that Silent Hill 2 is thee most inspiration horror game of all time, look no further.

What was initially a fascinating rabbit hole of interpreting a fictional game developer's oeuvre by examining key symbols & psyche, eventually turned into woefully brushing over decades of inner workings of artists turned into art & how a viewer can digest it. The game's message isn't inherently wrong for it is ultimately a work of how one can connect to art, but I cannot find myself to agree with what is suggested throughout.

Keep in mind, one does not necessarily have to unravel hidden meanings & deeper symbolic gestures in every piece they come across. Sometimes, it's even better to simply feel the emotive gall of a piece of art. Furthermore, the game indirectly suggests that a form of projection is taking place when overanalyzing art at times. To that, I have to say: correct. But this is what art is all about. Art, whatever your interpretation of it may be, is almost always a discussion between the artist & the viewer. It is a two-sided (sometimes more) dialogue that pricks at thee heart & mind in such a way that is ultimately life affirming.

Dave means well with this game. After all, it's one in which you could ultimately interpret, perhaps against his own wishes, that he himself is attempting to purge this state of thinking while experiencing art itself. But the "games" in this suggests that there is something going on underneath the surface of the creator in the metafiction here (aside of course, from literal symbolism that Dave is projecting into Coda's own games). By simply creating something, one is shedding skin for the audience to witness. One central message that Dave conveys is that an artist does not owe their audience anything, & to assume what the artist is experiencing when creating something without having a single idea what that might be can be dangerous. A cyclone of sorts forms, one that can potentially create a parasocial relationship with an artist that may be more dangerous than helpful.

Suffice it to say, a fair amount of points that Dave suggests in this game are not necessarily damaging to art or how we experience it (I generally disagree with them, but at times they hold some weight), but it all quickly becomes relatively disingenuous by the mere act of Dave purposefully going out of their way to create fictional games that seemingly have no meaning whatsoever. By the end, the mere existence of this game contradicts the point its trying to make, to some extent.

But maybe I'm only proving Dave's point. So be it.