Something magical happened with Blek.

For starters: Blek is a puzzle game with a mechanic that could only really be done on a touchscreen: the exact motion of the line you draw out is repeated over and over, and the goal is to use that repetition to collect pellets in the level while avoiding obstacles. It's so simple and so well suited to a touchscreen, and it makes a genuinely great mobile puzzle game on its own.

Now the magical bit: the game is broken. Some of the levels don't display properly on modern screens, which occasionally makes the intended solution impossible. For example, in the hint for level 60, there is an indicator suggesting you draw a portal - which is something you can do btw, game never lets you know that outside of hints lol - draw the portal OUTSIDE of the screen. You can just see the edge of the indicator.

Now with some games, this breaks them. In our screen filled hellscape I think everyone has experienced something only partially displaying onscreen, making it untouchable. But miraculously, for Blek, this invites for some truly clever innovation. If you look up Level 60 solutions on YouTube (like I did once hitting this roadblock), you will find tons of different approaches: reversing the motion of the line by bouncing off the wall, then entering the portal, drawing an extra long portion to reach over to where the portal would have come out, some strange worm-thing that inches back and forth, deftly wrapping around obstacles. It's BEAUTIFUL. And sometimes this happens naturally in the game, and the game is totally cool with it. To see it happen mistakenly and have players to overcome the odds and come up with new approaches, that's magical. It's so uncommon for a puzzle game to allow for this much variety in solutions and it's wonderfully refreshing. This game doesn't feel a day old.

So Blek devs, please never fix your game, I love it as it is.

Played this with a PS5 controller on an iPad. What a time to be alive.

It's not half bad. You got a large selection of clubs, the normal factors that have to be considered for each shot (wind, lie, terrain, etc), plus a tiny addition from the "favorite club" and character specialty thing, though I'm still not really sure how that works exactly. Besides just tourney play, there is match play, driving challenges, a few training modes. For a 3D golf game on mobile it's pretty good.

I think I played it at the right time too; from what I can tell, three-tap mode didn't exist until a month or so ago, which is more than a year after the initial release. I messed around with touch mode, both on screen and with controller, and just didn't really prefer it. I think it was a fair thing to try for a mobile game, but (on iPad), it was a bit too hard to get the sort of precision I wanted, and also topspin/backspin was not really doable, although apparently some backspin can be applied with a shorter flick. The three tap mode is what I'm used to, though it's much easier than what EG 2017 had. You can't really mess up a shot, but what made it a little interesting was doing a "hard swing", which trades off accuracy for distance, and encourages you to add curve to your shots.

What was really weird was the lack of music. I mean, there's actually music in this game, in the menus, when you're putting, etc. Just not when you're, y'know, doing the thing you do most of the game. Golfing. It's a silent experience other than random ambient sounds and it ain't great, especially compared to the actually quite fun bg tracks in EG 2017.

Winning tourneys is also a bit too easy. I'm 4 courses in and still am usually at least -10 ahead of next closest player. And challenge matches to unlock characters are complete jokes, the CPU will always miss their first putt, first chip, etc. It's hard to lose against them.

Also not really sure what the point of the "building a team" system. You get to pick characters who will play one hole in each game, and one hole only. The characters have pretty minimal differences though, and some of their specialties are like... "Rough" or "backspin", which like, I'm probably gonna encounter on any given hole. And I'm not memorizing the course layouts to try and plan the best character for each home so??? Not really sure what they were going for but at least you get to play with a bunch of kinda outdated stereotypes to represent different cultures/people I guess

Hard to stand up to such a banger like EG but good for what it is

I have never felt so much like a game was "made for me". Solar Ash is a fusion between so many games that are close to my heart: Outer Wilds, Shadow of the Colossus, Jet Set Radio... And yet it creates its own feel.

The world - if you can call it that, its more of an amalgamation of worlds - is so unique. Different planets collided into a void, mashed together, shattered, scattered, with only a handful of confused survivors trying to come to terms with their shared tragedy of losing absolutely everything. The wealth of quality voice acting and info logs hidden throughout the game develops such a strong narrative that I felt determined as Rei to prevent the trauma I walked into in each new area.

And YES! This game creates actually interesting, unique environments for each area. While I'd say the final area (volcanic) was the least interesting, many of the others will stand out in my memory for a long time. The desertified crab world was fantastic, and while the metaphors for climate change were occasionally too heavy-handed for my liking, I still love the game's realistic approach of people not caring until it's too late.

And the controls are so satisfying! And the exploration is awesome! There was never a situation where I felt like I was being walled-off (other than the literal walls at the edges of most zones, but eh, they weren't blocking off anything). I'm still convinced I can climb to some clifftops if I maneuver around just right, and often I'd find my way up somewhere that felt so natural and yet led to a little surprise - Super Mario Odyssey style - the developer saying "hey, nice job!", and that's all it needed to make it worth it.

There's a lot more I could say about this game - it's flawlessly smooth controls that make it simply FUN to skate over the weird, fluffy geometries, the effective simplicity of the health/damage system, the story hiding clues towards the truth as you approach it (and yet it was resolved in a surprising, beautiful way that left me even more curious), it's all so so good.

I wasn't ready to leave the world by the time it was over. But that's a rare, beautiful thing.

- Tarragon Danderpaws

A really pleasant experience, short but sweet. The environmental storytelling is awesome, there are so many little details about the world you can only discover by really exploring and putting everything under a magnifying glass. And the world really is stunning, there are a few spots where you can let the cat rest and watch the camera slowly zoom out to encompass a large area, and I was glued to the screen the entire time.

I was surprised - but not actually in a bad way - that this game isn't some mega-polished ultra high quality visual showpiece. There are object physics, but they easily get screwy when you start to mess with them. The cat animations are great, but up close, the cat isn't actually very graphically detailed. But none of that really matters, the team obviously knew where to spend there time, where the visuals really mattered.

Biggest issue for me was the latter half of the game feeling a bit quick and lackluster compared to the wonder and explorability of the slums. The final area was quite cool, I wish they did more with it.

KUNAI flips weapon progression systems on their head. You start with nothing but a katana, which is already the most powerful weapon in the game (and you can make it stronger), letting you heal yourself by attacking with it. Then it gives you a RIGHT kunai (grappling hook), making you go "oooh so its like Twilight Princess with the double clawshots" and then not 5 seconds later you find the LEFT kunai and you go "ooohh...?". From there on, its pretty standard, but still some surprising twists: you get throwing stars, but they don't do damage! By the time you get the BIG EXPLODY GUN, you've probably mastered every other weapon and know when its best to use the weaker guys and when to pull out the big guns. The only things I don't like about the weapons is that their charged attack upgrades are too slow to use when you'd need them most, and the best one (the one for the katana) trades off with health, so you will probably quickly stop using it. Also, the katana upgrades cost a shit ton. I think that's because they are meant to be a last resort, but even then, where do you make that much money?

Shockingly this game has absolutely no transport/teleport/quick travel mechanic. It's like a perfect case example of how sorely needed quick travel is in action platformers (idk if you can truly call this a metroidvania), because you will FEEL IT when you need to backtrack, and it almost seems like this game wants you to backtrack. Sometimes it's almost ridiculous, with one dungeon requiring you to walk across its entire length to go through a door you just flipped open, and then do the same thing but in reverse. It sucks and also demotivated me from going back to previous areas to find all the hidden chests.

Speaking of hidden chests... This game very much falls prey to the "invisible wall with a room behind it" torture that is a staple of metroidvanias now, I guess. Like collecting or finding hidden stuff? Settle in, because you are going to be rubbing against EVERY WALL to make sure you don't miss anything cool. Blegh, please no more.

The boss fights actually featured some great variety, which confirms this isn't a metroidvania. But... Zensei... Again, it's like a case study in why some bosses need checkpoints, or just like, a way to not have to redo the entire fight because the last section is inexplicably much harder than the rest. I was so fed up with Zensei by the time I beat him, it was not at all a "YES! I DID IT!" it was a "the pain is over, and now i can begin healing".

The music is sick, Quantum Forest made me just want to spend more time there. However, I was pretty surprised to find the Final Boss music was... the same as every other boss. And the credits music... was the boss music again. I think. Or maybe it was the main menu music? Anyways, the extremely sudden credits roll with the reused track made me feel like I was giving too long of a speech at the Oscars. Like, "ok ok you did it, nice job, hurry up and get outta here".

Mixed feelings across the board. Definitely a fun time, but very much having some sore spots of major frustration.

It's a nice errand running game with very simple mechanics, so much so that there is not a single word used in the game itself. It also is very short, taking me 3 hours to do complete the main objectives plus have time to do everything I wanted to, which probably covered about 75% of the in-game achievements. For the current price of $25, I wouldn't really recommend it simply because it's just a bad value, but it was still a pleasant little experience (and hugging your plant around the island is very sweet and good)

A remarkably balanced, well paced, and replayable card game. God it feels so good to build a strategy out of all of the weird relics and cards you end up with through the run. I don't think I've replayed what is essentially the same game this many times and never once felt bored. I think StS hit the sweet spot in run length and difficulty curve. It's so easy to pick it up, give the spire another shot, and put it down whether it's a victory or a loss. And somehow out of dozens of failed attempts with what seemed like miraculously perfect decks, I never felt demotivated starting back at square 1.

If you know what I mean when I say 2D Infinifactory Sokoban, you should FOR REAL check this out.

If you don't, I'm talkin about a freaking box pushing optimization puzzle game where every level is a blank slate: build whatever you want! The only limit is the instruction count and the bot count.

This game's limits are so well constrained, and it's well suited to any sort of puzzle solver: slow but sure, perfectionist, puzzle god desiring a challenge, speedrunner, people who just like making a cool thing do a thing correctly.

The best part of this game is seeing your sokobots in action after meticulously winding them up, making sure they don't bump into each other or waste any steps, that they pause when they need to and step when it's time, and have that reach a beautiful loop.

It's a shame that not many people have checked this out yet. Although I haven't hardly played past the first world, I'm kinda slow at the puzzles so I've put in tons of time and every session has been puzzle zen.