Horace has lovely visuals, a good blend of classical and digital soundtrack, and a fairly good concept for a story. But it lacks that indescribable essence that's behind all good games, the "game feel".

Horace doesn't value your time. At least 50% of the game is unskippable cutscenes. Not a single cutscene is skippable. Horace's voice, which is a synthetic, unchanging voice used for every voice in the game, is cute and humorous only for the briefest of moments, before you realize that you are going to be hearing the exact same tones in different combinations for the next significant portion of your life. He commentates over every cutscene, speaking in quote format for other characters, and speaks quite a lot outside of cutscenes as well. I never want to hear this golden sod speak again.

The story seems to take some interesting twists in the time that I played, (up to chapter 8 out of 22) but it's such a slog to get through each chapter. Gameplay seems to be slotted in whenever the developer wanted, with dream sequences that don't advance the story taking up whole chapters appearing from nowhere and scarcely being mentioned again.
Overall, Horace's individual components are great, better than passing. But some very big issues crop up in the design of the game that really just make it not fun to play.

I really liked the platforming and there was a lot of creative stuff throughout, but didn't vibe with the story going all over the place and changing everything constantly. Some areas like the multiple stealth sections and a couple bosses were really unfun, especially the bosses since they're the only parts in the game that don't give you pity shields after dying enough, and the final boss in particular is actually one of the worst controlling things I've ever played. Overall though, still a unique experience I'd recommend checking out if you have it.

Complete playthrough. A well-made 2D platforming adventure following the 'life' of the titular sentient robot, Horace's highlight has to be its profound story, at turns touching. amusing and surreal. While platforming is the primary gameplay mechanic, often built around a gravity-manipulation mechanic and eventually becoming 'Metroidvania'-like with collectible upgrades and hidden secrets, occasional minigames and other side activities mix it up, often to good effect.

However, what drags the game down significantly is an absolutely punishing level of difficulty, which doesn't feel well-placed here and is especially frustrating when combined with the free-form exploration of some of the game's later chapters - it's simply not fun to navigate through difficult challenges repeatedly upon finding that a given direction isn't fruitful at the time. The game's story justifies its length, stretching across 22 chapters that will likely take somewhere in the region of 10-15 hours to play through, but in gameplay terms I'd gladly have seen it cut down to half that.