This one was interesting

It’s set in a world with a machine and bug hybrid aesthetic, the playable character is a humanoid robotic bug

You carry around these globes that are used to activate mechanisms on levels. But these globes also ARE levels, you can warp inside of them. You can warp inside a globe while carrying another globe. So you warp in and out of these globes depending on where you need them

Each globe has a boss, that when you defeat it unlocks the globe ability that you will need to progress elsewhere

Kinda trippy, but it’s designed in a way that you can notice without much difficulty when there’s nothing you can do where you currently are so you need to go elsewhere

Visuals and soundtrack are great and contribute to the atmosphere

Loses half a star because it felt like it could push the complexity a bit further, it does have some clever puzzles involving multiple level warping but the game sometimes actually scales the difficulty back

This game is something special albeit flawed

It has an interesting level design and some clever puzzles, but also some frustrations

It’s a Metroidvania, as in, it has intertwined paths with some areas only accessible after acquiring some ability, but it’s a 3D first person one, and it has some focus on physics-based puzzles on top of that

Some upgrades are more interesting than others, as some areas just need some basic stuff like improved jumping or having a weapon, but there’s some later equipments that are clever and unique

Its setting seems to be on an improvised toy world, with a giant human boy sometimes visible observing from afar, and with giant objects like tools and erasers spread around. The story is about a red kingdom and a blue kingdom, and you play as one of the red people that needs to solve the lack of water in the village, seemingly caused by foul play from the blue people

Puzzles involve buttons, paint, electricity, gravity

There’s secret areas with collectibles to discover

Some upgrades need to be bought with coins you find along the way, some others are items you need to collect

You can also improve health, attack, recharge rate, regeneration

NPCs sometimes give hints, sometimes give comic relief

Now about its flaws. It took a while before the more interesting equipments showed up; the physics feel kinda floaty and unreliable, and sometimes I was unsure if I haven’t found the solution or if I just needed to try do to something again; Imo enemies are unremarkable and lack variety; It has no fast-travel, it kind of replaces them with launch pads around the way, but it made me a bit disoriented sometimes

Its level and puzzle design were interesting enough to compensate for the flaws imo, so it loses only one star

The gameplay loop is pretty simple. You can only move left and right, and if you move your character for like a second or so you will explode and respawn back to the middle of the screen. However, you get several kinds of rewards while doing it

The game description mentions "player investment manipulation" and it does get its point across, illustrating how extrinsic rewards (mostly numbers going up) can be used to keep the players' attention even though what you're doing is not that interesting

There's an actual ending, btw.

Some objectives aren't clear and others drag for too long, so it loses a couple of stars, but it's an interesting idea and ends in a clever way

Great gameplay and premise.

It's an action-rpg where you explore an island searching for other castaways, with some of them offering new services on the village and it's nice to see the village getting more and more complete. You also get to uncover mysteries on the island

You can get giftable items that raise approval from other characters which allows you to learn more about them, and it may boost stats in certain cases.

Combat is a bit button-mashy but you can swap between three characters with a button and there's bonus damage for using the correct type of character. Also, there's other bonuses for correctly timed dodges and blocks. Some satisfying to use special moves.

There's raids and hunts which are special wave-based missions

There's optional fishing

Some light Metroid-like elements with sections of the map reachable only after obtaining certain gear

Overall very enjoyable. Loses half a star due to a few technical issues and some jankiness, like unnecessary invisible walls that makes you need to walk around certain sections that could have been jumpable.

Great first-person-puzzler with some interesting world-building and some philosophical stuff
Starts simple with boxes and laser redirections but by the end there there's a few more tools that can be combined with these simpler ones
Loses a star due to overstaying its welcome, and due to some of the longer puzzles having a bit of a filler start, having to get access to the items in the room in laborious ways, before the real gotcha part of the puzzle arrives, that is, the combined use of the available items