This is a game where a bunch of talented developers were stuck in the same room for two years who were never told "no." Instead, they told each other "sure, bro."

Want to make a bunch of new mechanics that are both overcentralizing and near-irrelevant? Sure, bro.

Want to make a 30-60 minute long tutorial you can only skip by winning a race you only can win if you already know how to play the game somehow? Sure, bro.
(Don't even get me started on how the tutorial was before the first patch, the requirements to skip the tutorial were hidden AND you had to clear a max-level race. Actually evil.)

Want to generally nerf items while cranking the knockback to unfathomable degrees which creates scenarios where you can get knocked out of a top position and no item is reasonably strong enough to get you back where you were? Sure, bro.

Want to make items actively feel bad to get because the Ring system is so encouraged while also not letting you use Rings with an item in hand? Sure, bro.

Want to make like 200 tracks but they all have narrow tracks and very tight turns? Sure, bro. Also want to make any uphill slope kill your speed and make you have to STOP IN PLACE to Spin Dash upward VERY SLOWLY? Sure, bro.

Want to make a single player mode where the rubberbanding is overtuned (even after a near launch day nerf, mind you), the AIs will target you even when you're near dead-last, and the Rival explicitly cheats and will steal victories from you? Sure, bro.

Want to make an unlock system like Kirby Air Ride but make a bunch of requirements hard, cryptic, and/or straight up unrealistic to achieve unless you dedicate literal months of game time? Suuuuure, bro.

Despite its many, MANY problems, the game is still fun and I can see a version of this game where the new additions compliment base SRB2K rather than detract. The Rings being the omnipresent, overbearing problem is an issue I don't see being fixed, though. The devs seem really proud of their Ring system even if it kills the Kart aspect by making items less used/encouraged. I can always hope, though.

tl;dr Imagine if Mario Kart was mixed with F-Zero but all the worst parts of F-Zero were mixed in with a dash of unique jank and bad decisions. Enjoyable for kart-racer tryhards, completionists, and masochists, and nobody else.

"Peter, what are you playing?"

"Crack."

"Peter, what the fu-"

Simultaneously peak and mid.

Peak mid, if you will.

The writing is extremely cute and charming, yet it is obviously juvenile in a way the console games aren't. Guntz's arc is solid and more mature than the rest of the game, but the game doesn't go any deeper than a Power Rangers show. Still, the writing is very funny and very earnest. I found myself smiling a lot at the dialogue and there were moments that I found genuinely moving, though the intended audience is squarely for children rather than the all-ages mature writing of DtP and LV.
The fan translations insistence on making the dialogue swear-heavy is very stupid, though, and single-handedly justifies localization as a concept if fans shove in four letter swears into a very Rated E game.

The music is either really dinky and simple or inexplicably very good tracks (ignoring the tracks from other games) with highlights being the vocal theme and the moon area's theme.

I enjoy the gameplay...kind of. The weapon diversity is really fun to play around with, and I like how each character has their own gimmick. The color gimmick is actively detrimental, though, and more often than not puts the player in unfair situations in cases of enemy groups with mixed colors. Since you're forced to have each attack button locked to a specific color, this locks move variety for every character that isn't Klonoa and even then he would appreciate a lot more move diversity in some of his weapons.
There's a lot of other decisions that are baffling like the OBNOXIOUS level curve, mashing being the enforced way to optimize combat, the existence of the healing enemy in a lot of room layouts including as a summonable mook for the final boss that can fully heal the guy if you're unlucky and don't have a special move prepared, and the lack of i-frames giving some enemies like the Shield Moos the ability to kill you VERY quickly.
If you play this, just level Klonoa and Guntz. This way the level curve is anywhere near tolerable without 10 hours of overall grinding. While Pango is enjoyable, his usefulness unfortunately falls off hard and all his weapons do the same thing.

Overall, Klonoa Heroes was an experience I enjoyed but the game also got on my nerves so badly I had to put this down for four months before picking it up again. I really do think an ARPG game would work very well for Klonoa. Mature the writing and make it more in line with the console games; get rid of all the jank that makes the game more limiting and unfair than it needs to be; and don't make every single boss have 3000 HP and have so much defense the fights last for 10 minutes with minimal variation. Do this and there's very solid potential for a stellar entry into the series.
As-is, only play this if you have extreme patience for grinding and GBA jank. You don't lose a lot of the experience watching an LP instead.

Never have I played a game that does such a good job at respecting the player's ability to perform. Pseudoregalia gives you moves one at a time to play around with, gives you some tips in the pause menu if you need them, and lets you play around with them in a wide open world. It's so satisfying cracking how every move works and how you can use it to expand your movement in all new ways. Heck, the game even lets you work with LESS moves to sequence break however much you feel like you're able to. I've got into so many places I shouldn't have been and I felt rewarded every single time for doing so. Of course, you're gonna need everything to beat the game (I think?), but it feels so satisfying to do so no matter how limited or wide your tookit feels.

The atmosphere is also top notch. I loooove dream-like environments to death and this game does an excellent job of making the entire experience feel like a surreal dream. The art style, the music, and even the few bits of writing all tie together to make an excellent experience to jump and slide through like I'm Richter Belmont plopped into Klonoa and told to schmoove.

The one singular miiinor gripe I have is how easy it is to get lost. The game is small in scope so you're never lost for too long, but you can run around like a headless chicken for a while. I don't think a map would help very much, if anything it would defeat some of the point since the game is so small. Instead, I would add LANDMARKS. Things to make every room feel distinct in a way that isn't how the level design is arranged or something like that. This way you can have no map but still have a way to get your bearings in even the darkest of places.

Overall, I think I want to marry this game and have kids that look exactly like Pseudoregalia. Meaning I want more of this since this game is basically perfect aside from some quirks that prevent me from immediately putting it at a 10 or one of my favorites. I do think this game is probably my GOTY for 2023 even though it's such a short and sweet experience.

Go play it. It's cheap and short.

What does it mean to be an artist? Is it to create for yourself? For others? Is it even about having talent whatsoever? And how can you still love art if it becomes your work?

These questions and more are what Chicory proposes through both its gameplay and narrative. It's a very quirky game by nature, putting you in the shoes of a total goober coloring a now colorless world while interacting with the, well, colorful world and the characters who inhabit it. I have next to zero competence when it comes to drawing, yet this game was extremely accessible to someone like me. The world is your coloring book and it is shockingly enjoyable to sit down on a random screen of the game and either doodle to my heart's desire to make things as pretty as possible, throw color everywhere haphazardly, or screw around and draw Amoguses everywhere. Even for people who aren't very creatively oriented, there's still a very enjoyable and engaging puzzle adventure to explore and piece together bit by bit. It's not hard at all but Chicory as a game does a very good job of mixing together it elements into a canvas anybody can have fun painting onto.

The narrative reminds me a lot of Kiki's Delivery Service in the sense that the primary themes revolve around a passion and losing that passion to work, perfectionism, or simple artist's exhaustion. Doing anything over and over again is exhausting, let alone something that you love now with heaps and loads of pressure on your back. That's not to say the game ever says having work you're passionate about is a BAD thing, but it does explore the woes of the career artist as well as the hobbyist. As someone who wants to work as a creative myself someday, this story hit me like a freight train. Chicory's writing does a great job of telling you things straight but having the characters have very complex motivations to the point where they could and do reasonably make different decisions in very similar situations. The protagonist (default named Pizza, but I called them Pumpkn Pie) and Chicory (the character) both exemplify this perfectly as both grow and cope with the hand they've been given in very different ways while serving as great foil to one another. Pizza has no innate talent but carries artistic drive, while Chicory violently burned out even though she's definitively the best artist in the whole game. The relationship that forms between these two characters is very believable in both how they interact with one another and how they influence each other for the better, thankfully so since this is the backbone of the entire narrative. (Between this game and Wandersong, I've learned this team is VERY good at making strong protag-deuterag relationships that really explore the themes of the game.) It certainly helps that the cast of side characters are all very charming as well and suitably goofy to break up how honest and raw the main story beats can be.

The other parts of this game are also great, from the art direction managing to hit very good even in monochrome to the absolutely stellar soundtrack by Lena Raine that I'm confident I'll listen to a lot outside the game. There's not a lot to say here since the art style generally speaks for itself, and if I wanted to gush about the soundtrack I'd probably lean a bit into spoiler territory so I'll hold off.

The only real gripe I have with this game is that it's kind of a hassle to go find every little collectible for 100%, but I've learned that games should be enjoyed however much you want to. It's okay if I do most things while leaving a little to rest or go back to later. They're more or less all extras anyway. I feel like I got everything I wanted from this game. Progression can feel a bit boring and repetitive but these levels are so short I barely care, if I really feel bored I can just go do something else since there's lots TO do in Chicory.

I heavily recommend this game. It's very cute, charming, and surprisingly intelligent. Though the game might be a bit trickier without a mouse to really make things precise for those who love to draw all detailed.

A wonderful combination of heartfelt warmth and rolling tension amid a dark mystery, this game manages to constantly one-up itself with every move. My only complaints are that the bad endings are mostly bland and the trial-and-error nature of the game makes things way more tedious than they probably need to be. This is a game I can't really talk about much to those who don't know about it since so much of the fun is discovering the mystery, so just go play this already.

Side Note: The bonus anime preview included after the game ends made me die laughing because the TYPE-MOON art style clashes with the photorealism of literally everything else so hard. If only it were, y'know, actually good to circumvent that problem.

Demo Impressions:

Wow, what a cool concept for a game. Combining gunplay and typical video game motorcycle gameplay is a very creative and very fun basis for a game. I loved maneuvering around the different levels and using my bike to block/parry bullets while I let loose gunfire of my own. The core gameplay loop is wide open to different level design, different weapons in both the enemy's hands and your hands (though the latter didn't appear in the demo), and shockingly fun boss fights made the demo never boring for even a moment. Even the down-time was great just getting to wander around the wastelands and listening to the vocal soundtrack portrayed with cassette tapes. I will say I wish there was more clarity what each gun is "for" per se since the crossbow being a spread shot was not something I expected; I'd recommend a visual demonstration of the weapon bought in the menu personally. I also would like to see proper variation in enemy design since "seven guys with pistols" can wear thin quickly in a full game.

Speaking of the world, goooosssh it's so pretty. The art design in this game is beautiful and transports me to the barren plains and deserts I've personally driven through. The in-game art is all wonderful with the characters all being very unique and distinct while the fully animated cutscenes bring the world to life even harder. I will say a weird quirk with the cutscenes is the pacing being way too fast for all of them. All of them are five seconds long at most and the pacing of the scenes would be better if they simply drew out the scenes. An example that was the most jarring was the FMV with Puppy howling at the funeral pyre...then abruptly cutting to the same scene in-game with Puppy moving around nonchalantly as if she wasn't just grieving. Even a fade into black and fade back into the in-game scene after would do wonders for the pacing of these scenes to make them less jarring.

The writing does a solid job of portraying a world at its wit's end trying to cope with even living in it. My personal favorite parts were Laika's interactions with her brother and daughter. Another highlight was the aftermath of a sidequest where she lies about a tree being well and the sidequest giver catches her in a lie...and thanks her anyway. That felt a very real response to me and I can't quite pinpoint why. I think the game withholds a little too much information from the player initially though, mostly with the birds and their status as the big bads. It makes the character's actions feel a bit strange since we, the player, know literally nothing about them (although torturing, crucifying, and disemboweling a child for trespassing is a pretty good reason to be PO'd at somebody).

Overall, I'm pretty hopeful of this game and hope to see it improve from the snippet shown in the demo. At worst I can see this game being meh and that's only if they don't have the ambition to follow up on the core gameplay which I don't see them doing. There's at least one fan eagerly awaiting Coyote Mom Bike Game, and I hope to see more out there.