liked but didn't love this. i do love how incidental the level design can feel, and how it plays with scale and shape in some fun ways. it's got some of that anodyne 2 quality, where the level geometry and the moveset allow you to go out of bounds in certain areas, so the game feels like it's on the verge of breaking at all times. it fits the vaguely menacing and surreal tone supplied by the color palette, art style, and sound design - particularly the way the music speeds up or slows down when traveling between areas, such a cool effect.

the challenge is to sustain that tone over the course of a full game, and even though this is a pretty short game i think it sort of falls apart at the end as it starts to lean more fully into the horror elements. not that it ever becomes a horror game, but i think it works best when it has these vaguely unsettling tableaux that communicate story through implication. the last areas are more direct in terms of pacing - they're a little less exploratory - and more explicitly designed to evoke panic or anxiety, both in terms of environmental design and mechanical/gameplay design. which is less compelling because it's less subtle; and it feels a little disjointed from the rest of the game, which is focused on slower exploration and puzzle solving. it breaks its own illusion a bit.

but i guess that's sort of the problem with making a finite piece of art like a game. it has to end sometime, and the ending has to feel definitive or worthwhile in some way... allegedly.