this is one of those kinds of games that I start and think, "oh, I can totally get all the achievements for this! this will be pretty fun and relaxing!" and then as I play more I realize the scope of the game and what that entails and I pretty quickly give up on that. I struggle to find words to describe the game itself since it's pretty self-explanatory once you know what it's trying to do. the extra moves you unlock that basically afford to you complete control of your momentum at all times made it super fun to move around and I wish the game's challenges took advantage of that in any meaningful way beyond one or two spots where it's required. I had fun, though!

For consistency's sake, this has to receive my lowest possible score. I'm so sorry.

I reserve F-rank for games that are predatory, evil, or unplayable. This one falls into the unplayable category. I deliberated before giving this score, since it feels like I'm slightly stretching the definition of "playability." There is no life system, no health system, and by all accounts it is easy and completable - as of the time of writing, 17%+ of players on Play Station systems have 100%'d the game.

But movement is so slow and awful. Conservation of movement is inconsistent, especially when moving platforms or floors come into play. I played long enough to unlock two movement abilities, and still cannot tell if momentum affects jump trajectory or not. Each new ability felt awful, with input delay bad enough that I fell off the world in the tutorial scenarios teaching me how to use them.

Which, in the case of the air dash, was not even a full level! It was two gaps to jump over with the air dash to get some pithy currency! And for the life of me I could not consistently jump over to the treasure chest and back without "dying"! That was when I had had enough and turned the game off.

This is where I'm unsure if I'm being mean by saying this game is unplayable, because yes, I was able to get that treasure. The fact that I fell off the world on the return trip realistically didn't matter. But I only had the patience to try six times because the respawn point was right there. If I was evaluating whether the game was properly responding to my inputs, it was failing. The cost of trying to move past the game's failure was low, and the framing of the game's failure was not stressful - the stakes were the lowest of the low. But the failure was, ultimately, the game's, not mine.

Maybe it's because I was on the Switch version, where the frame rate dipped from its already slow pace often enough I did not register the game's slow-motion visual effects as intentional for over an hour. Doesn't matter. On its foundational gameplay, Tasomachi failed.

Which was the kind of fault I needed to allow myself to complain about how amateurish and terrible everything about the game's UI and presentation was. The pause menus didn't even have a back button, only a "return" option to scroll and press A on! Nonsensical vague lore, NPC cats that directed you towards already-completed objectives, plain white text without text boxes, sign posts that made it unclear whether they were tracking progress or stating requirements. What virtues could Tasomachi have to potentially make up for so many pitfalls?

The cover art is cute, the environments are lovely, the character designs are endearing. But juxtaposed with the thread-bare, poorly explained interactivity, the only thing this game had going for it was a "vibe."

However, with games as vibe art, the game needs to function. If the point is to zone out and appreciate some lovely art direction in some easy-to-navigate level design, the gameplay better work so well as to disappear from my mind. The music and sound design better make me feel something more than any technical issues could pull me out of the moment.

For a game like Tasomachi that only has "a vibe" going for it, it instantly fails if the vibe is damaged. I can not play this game for a challenge. I can not play this game for a story. I can not play this game for anything other than "a vibe." So, if its own fundamental means of interactivity get in the way of me experiencing a vibe, the game has failed on the only metric it has asked me to appreciate it.

To continue engaging with Tasomachi's trinket collecting is the equivalent of paying to take out someone else's trash.

To give Tasomachi D rank at one star feels like it does not correctly convey its failure as a game concept. F rank at a half-star feels harsh, but only because the visuals feel like it should earn at least an F+. At the same time, you would have to pay me to boot it up again.

It's like a short indie Mario Odyssey.

Good music and lovely art. This game has a lot going in the "vibes" department.

The controls are a bit sluggish, and it's easy to forget what you should be doing at any point.

It's not a bad game by any stretch, but it could use some polish.