Incredibly charming soulslike platformer. Quality writing, quality combat, and quality exploration all around. It only sags in polish, where you can tell the small team struggled with some minor bugs and level geometry issues (I ended up out-of-bounds several times just through exploring the edge of a map or an enemy clipping me through the floor). Also the difficulty curve is especially wonky, with a lot of late-game bosses going down very quickly without requiring the player to learn their patterns. But the fundamentals are all great, and it's a triumph that an indie game can match some of FromSoft's best gamefeel.

i came into this knowing very little of the game's actual content other than seeing glimpses of incredible visuals in the occasional image/clip and the polarizing reception from those who had been anticipating it. i never personally played any demos or followed along with the development, trailers, or anything of the sort so i didn't have any of the baggage that may have came with that.

when i started this up, i was expecting a horror tinged adventure game that veered closer to a walking sim with some unfortunate combat thrown in for good measure. my first surprise was the environmental design and puzzles. right from the beginning it felt like what i had been seeing in terms of difficulty and complexity had been ripped from Myst. was absolutely fascinated with the obscurity of the flow from area to area and the various puzzles themselves. i can see where some would've had less tolerance for this but i'm glad it clicked for me.

elsewhere i was pleasantly surprised with the combat even. there's no getting around it, the combat feels like complete trash. fortunately for me (and anyone else who played similarly) you can avoid fighting anything a solid 80% of the time if you move your ass. lots of enemies and hazards are in places that you're passing through on your way to go elsewhere and won't be back so there's no harm in running. the occurrences of enemies in spots that i was returning to was infrequent enough that i didn't mind when i had to deal with them all that much. beyond that, the actual boss type encounter that shows is shockingly decent for how the gameplay is and as someone who will happily trash a decent 70% of the boss fights i play in games.

that leaves me with the aforementioned selling point, the aesthetics. this is visually one of the most stunning games i've ever seen. Giger influence isn't anything unique among games (or any media) but the absolute devotion to its design, even at the cost of everything else was refreshing.

it's over just as quickly as it gets started and it won't be making my faves list or anything (at least not upon this first playthrough, maybe in a few years with a replay?) but this feels like a truly singular piece of art. maybe this isn't what it was looking like during development or what people who were waiting otherwise wanted but i'm truly glad to have experienced it, flaws and all.