The game has a cool vibe to it. I like the spatial/spacecraft aesthetics, and the racers all have flamboyant costumes & haircuts 😄
I knew Captain Falcon for so long because he has always been part of every Smash game, so it was nice to finally play his own series after all this time!

The driving mechanics were so special. The spacecrafts are extremely sensitive when you turn, and they all feel really floaty.
I tried a lot of different ones during the first hour, but I eventually stuck to the Astro Robin. This vehicle had great acceleration and top speed, really satisfying & noob-friendly vehicle.

I didn't expect F-Zero GX to be so challenging. The game seems to have a high skill ceiling, and it made ending up in 1st place all the more rewarding.
It's not simple to avoid hitting the walls, and you can easyly fall into the void because you went too fast, or because another racer pushed you into it. And you have to use your boost carefully, because using too much of it can cause your vehicle to overheat.

There were several well designed tracks. I liked the circuit "Port Town - Long Pipe" where you're driving through a tube most of the race while avoiding the pillars in the way. Casino Palace and Cosmo Terminal were also really cool.

The TV interviews always crack me up for some reason. It's so goofy and cliché but in a good way.

I had enough of the game after 5 hours. I don't really have any criticism really, it just didn't manage to grab me for very long. Maybe I'm just not a huge fan of racing games.

----------Playtime & Completion----------

[Started on January 6th & stopped on January 12th 2024]
Playtime: 5 hours
I stopped after winning the Diamond Cup.

"Terraria is a land of adventure! A land of mystery! A land that's yours to shape, to defend and to enjoy. Your options in Terraria are limitless, are you an action gamer with an itchy trigger finger? A master builder? A collector? An explorer? There's something for everyone here."

I took this directly from the Terraria wiki, since we spent almost the entire game with it open; I thought it best to consult it first. This brief introduction defines well what Terraria is and what you can expect from the game. Terraria is easily one of my favorite indie games, I'm not sure where it would rank in my list, but it would definitely be among the top five I like the most. But what makes this game incredible?

Terraria emerged at a time when Minetrash was starting to gain popularity, meaning comparisons between the two are inevitable, but the similarities are limited to just the basic concepts: procedurally generated worlds, mining, and the crafting workbench. However, Terraria has undergone many more changes over the years and has received almost a decade of free updates. This demonstrates the care that the developers have for the game.

At first glance, Terraria may not seem very appealing; it is visually simple and can easily be mistaken for just another generic sandbox title. But as you explore the landscape, it becomes evident how creative the game is. It goes beyond mere building and ore collection, delving much deeper into the basic mechanics of a sandbox. Here, there is a genuine reason to construct things, not just for aesthetic purposes; it is crucial for the game's progression. Yes, there is indeed a progression in the game, along with an overwhelming amount of content such as bosses, events, NPCs, tons of weapons, accessories, and many other items that will aid you on your journey – over 5000 items at your disposal. The game's progression is measured by the bosses you defeat, and by doing so, you gain access to new items like stronger pickaxes, allowing you to gather new resources and become even more formidable to face the next boss.

Overall, Terraria offers an extremely satisfying experience and deserves all the praise it receives. Obviously, this is just a simplistic view in the face of the grandeur that the game represents. Each generated world is a unique experience, after all, being a sandbox, the way you explore the world, build structures, or defeat the bosses is entirely up to the player.

The first genuinely pleasant surprise of my 2023.

Flywrench's core concept seems so simple in theory, yet is carried out so deftly despite how ankle-breakingly difficult the game gets. You steer this flying contraption that has to maneuver through these tight corridors and have to change to the correct corresponding color (white in neutral state, red when tapping and holding jump, and green when spinning the contraption and bouncing off of yellow walls) to successfully pass through while "platforming." There's not much complexity to the control scheme in terms of movement tech, but the controls are quite sensitive, to where you could sneeze on your controller or accidentally tap the jump button too quickly and you'd find yourself rocketing off into the ceiling. It's not the most elegant platformer out there given the sheer precision required to master the momentum physics, aerial drift, and the eternal struggle against gravity itself, but the raw and sloppy feeling quick-fire movement turns into this thing of beauty when you finally break through and start exploiting the game's systems, flying through levels like a speed demon with no regards for safety.

Without a doubt, this is the fastest platformer I've played to date. That's a good thing; all of the levels minus the final level in the Sun can be realistically cleared in less than 15 seconds (and most in half of that time even). The game never felt unfair in my eyes either, because Messhof does a great job carefully introducing each new related concept (the jump, then the spin, then unpassable pink line barriers, then switches and moving obstacles, etc) and really fleshing out the obstacle escalation to its maximum potential with so many different combinations. The difficulty thus stems less from overwhelming the player with hazards all at once or lengthening levels to punish more heavily, and more from utilizing trickier variations of obstacles to create tighter execution barriers. Since levels are over in a blink of an eye and death is just a quick fade out animation that immediately reloads, there's essentially no time to rage when you've already respawned for another go.

I've always thought that I understood the "controls as an extension of the body" theory, but Flywrench is the first game that really forced me to experience it in action. It's such a blindingly quick experience, that even if you can see the levels coming right at you with the brightly color coded hazards and imagine completing it in your head, it ultimately comes down to a test of pure reaction time. It's less about trusting your inherent skill as a player, and more about throwing your inhibitions away, forgetting about execution/input barriers, and melding with the vessel itself and just doing it outright. You don't really have time to consider the play by play for something as condensed and quickfire as this game; you just have to make it happen. I honestly can't really say any other game has ever put me in this headspace.

It's not a perfect experience: the difficulty spike in the last world (Mercury) is very noticeable as it took me about an hour to clear everything prior and almost two hours to clear Mercury alone, the game has some occasional strange stuttering and frame rate drops which causes extremely noticeable chugging since the game's logic is tied to the frame rate, and the final level feels a tad bit out of place since it's significantly longer than any other level in the game. Despite that, Flywrench is definitely the best "arcade" 2D platformer that I've played to date, and it's somehow criminally overlooked despite being by the creators of Nidhogg. The simple yet distinct energetic retro visuals and the absolutely fire soundtrack only further highlight how this is unlike anything that I've ever played before. Definitely give this a shot if you're looking for a succinct rush of adrenaline that puts practically every other precision platformer I've ever played to shame.