Zero Mission is a remake of the NES classic Metroid with updated graphics and controls inspired by the later Metroid entries. The result just didn't hit the spot for me, it at once feels too similar to Super Metroid but lacks the polish to live up to it making for an overall inferior reimagining of the first Metroid.

The graphics are modernised but the world feels so much more generic despite essentially taking place in the exact same locale. All areas have either polished metal panels or rocky interiors with only a couple of exceptions and lighting differences between them. Every region feels samey and it lacks the character of Super's grimy aged textures, not to mention the environmental variety and the way the world changed and reacted to your progress. It's a shame that ZM diminishes the stark visual upgrade Super provided despite being a newer game on more powerful hardware.

I found the worst part of the game was the controls. The difference between jumps and summersaults, missiles as a hold instead of switch, moving in and out of ball mode, jumping out of ledge grabs, wall jumping, and timing for space jumps all combine to make the controls feel inconsistent and over complicated. It was like the controls eroded over the course of the game as every new mechanic compounded the issue. The unexplained shinespark mechanics were the point I gave up my hunt for collectibles and finished the game. I never had these issues with Super and maybe it's just how the levels are arranged but ZM just feels sticky, stiff, and rigid as no movement smoothly transitions.

The new pirate ship area was the least inspired part of the whole experience, introducing a new extra rocky area, a new metal panel area, and a very forced stealth section. It's clear that they didn't want to stray far from the Super formula with this one and they don't take any risks. The puzzles, item placement, level design, and mechanics are all very samey but without any of the character from Super. Even the bosses are either 1 to 1 repeats of what's come before or unimaginative big bug encounters that are easily forgotten.

While I've laid out a lot of harsh criticism that's not to say that ZM isn't a perfectly playable platformer. The majority of gameplay is fine and the control issues are circumstantial. It's a good game I just didn't feel like it was a good Metroid game and even then I seem to be in the minority. If you're looking for more of that style of gameplay ZM is going to mostly scratch the itch, just don't expect any wild innovation.

Dokpaon Monster Hunter is a mystery dungeon style game that feels like a lazy copy and paste of their board game mechanics. The result is a game that feels slow, tedious, lazy, and poorly thought out.

The game is terribly translated, and not in the way that gives it character like in later entries, it's just barely understandable. The story is childish nonsense anyway, NPC's spout generic lines that repeat the same thing over and over, and then you go to the first dungeon.

There's no tutorial or explanation on how to play, the items you get have no use because enemies die in one hit and you take 1 damage if you do get hit, the combat transitions are very slow and enemies are very common so that gets old fast, and the combat music is a very annoying 3 second loop.

All the tactical variety is in small numerical buffs to attack, defence, or speed, as are the skills you start unlocking, and the bonuses from the weapons you discover. Not that you have any use for them. Enemy sprites in the dungeon also don't look anything like what you end up fighting, and the level designs are incredibly simplistic with no real features.

When I finally got to the boss it one shot me despite having found some 'prevent knockout' items. Maybe if I'd had a reason to figure out what the rock paper scissors mechanics do or if I'd gotten lucky and found better gear I might have survived? All I know for sure is I lost everything found so far and had to start the dungeon over from scratch. I didn't feel like losing another hour to playing more of this.

The copy pasted combat mechanics from the other Dokapon games feel ironically out of place in this rpg game, combat is tedious, poorly implemented, and unintuitive. Menus don't work how you would expect, the skills are numeric and boring, the items and equipment are lacklustre, the maps are dull, the enemies are generic, and the writing is terrible. Maybe mystery dungeons aren't my thing but the core loop was just very off putting. Low marks all around.

Team Reptile do a great job with this love letter to Jet Set Radio Future, reviving the rail-grinding platformer in an HD reimagining that doesn't stray far from the original recipe.

The story follows a group of 'writers' (dabbling in x-sports, graffiti, dancing etc.) taking on the other gangs of the city to become the best. It's cartoony at points but it fits fine in the futuristic setting and serves more as justification for the game than anything.

For visuals BRCF perfectly revitalises the cel shaded Y2K Harujuku Technopunk fusion aesthetic of JSRF while modernising it so feels like a true sequel. On top of that you have the killer glitch-hop soundtrack with some incredible talent and 3 tracks from the legendary Hideki Naganuma who was the lead artist on the JSRF OST. The only downside was that each area prioritises a small mixtape of tracks and they tend to feel overplayed by the time you leave.

Gameplay is focused on spraying graffiti then out performing the other team in challenges. Like JSRF score is based on button tapping to build points while racking up multipliers without breaking your combo. Each each rail corner, halfpipe, and wall grind is worth +1 multiplier so high scores require you to explore the whole map, following the rail spaghetti then 'manualing' (grinding along the ground) between interactables before you run out of speed.

The manuals are very generous (for bmx and boards) so gameplay isn't too challenging, rather most combo breaks will come from miss-inputs, falling off the map, or clipping geometry by accident. Manuals also feels like a bit of a crutch for the level design as areas don't always naturally 'flow' into one another or feel linked in a meaningful way. This leaves the gameplay feeling simplistic and a key area that could have used more innovation, especially since it gets repetitive fast and there isn't a lot of motivation to keep at it once you beat the story missions in each map.

This gets at a central problem in BRCF which is that it's very surface deep. You can use BMX's, Skateboards, and Inlines but the mechanical differences are minimal, you can unlock 20-odd characters but they don't have any impact on gameplay or story, there's 71 graffiti designs to unlock and spray them using the same minigame, there's 5 huge maps but they all play the same from start to finish. Unlocking every cosmetic was tedious and by the time I did it there was no reason left to play - I'd already exhausted the gameplay just getting to that point.

Overall it's a rare and beautiful thing to see a spiritual sequel meet the measure of it's influence, and Reptile have done an impressive job - it took 10 years of dev work to make this happen which is no small feat and it's praise is hard earned. What I'd love to see now is a sequel that capitalises on that work, expands on it, and builds in more substantial variety instead of just the cosmetic stuff, but for now I'm appreciative that we have a little more JSR in the world. Buy the OST, buy the DLC and support that team for a sequel!

Minecraft is one big meme at this point, but I can't deny the game has so much character. The timing and sound design of mining makes gameplay so viscerally satisfying and relaxing. The core game has a little something for everyone, from spooky exploration, resource gathering, and crafting, to fighting monsters and building - either for practicality or creative expression.

This is one of the very few games I think got crafting genuinely right - there's a vast array of resources and they interact in lots of different meaningful ways. The crafting subsystems like brewing, redstone, and enchanting all build value in the others without cannibalising. Even the shaped crafting, albeit contentious, I think is a genuinely interesting and unique way to make crafting interesting instead of just clicking boring menu options; plus everything you make gains physicality as a UI 'thing' you can move around and control, not just an abstract number - that tiny difference means the world.

Minecraft does have it's flaws though. If minecraft is like Lego what it lacks is instructions, there's a huge part of the audience who just want to 'build the thing on the box' and minecraft doesn't have any templates or instructions per-se. You can follow achievements but they aren't always intuitive and systems like the brewing are still relatively cryptic without a guide. I myself love redstone, but most of the fun for me is in building other people's contraptions from youtube so implementing blueprints or something would simplify the process (as some mods already do). Legends was ripe for this, building purposeful structures that have game mechanics built into them like forts and towers, but alas it wasn't meant to be.

Another issue is that while Minecraft offers a lot of variety it's spread very thin. Many aspects are slowly being expanded on in Microsoft's yearly updates, which is admirable considering they're free, but there are gaping holes in the game's mechanics. New blocks like copper get introduced and then barely have any function besides decoration while stone tools remain largely useless and the end dimension and story are very shallow and tacked on. They add new biomes, subsystems like archaeology, and new mobs but these are often fleeting and shallow themselves. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather something than nothing but these problems are long overdue some attention.

Overall Minecraft doesn't show signs of slowing down any time soon and the constant additions exist largely to give people a reason to keep coming back to visit; But nothing lasts forever and adding more of the same without addressing the legacy issues leaves a lot of room for a contender to take it's spot. Even so with the incredible aesthetic, popularity, and stunning music from C418 it's not going to go down easily.

SoTN is the 2nd half of the metroidvania formula and while it's clear that it is built on the foundations of Super Metroid, it expands on that core recipe of game design and fuses it with a stylish blend of gothic and baroque that is truly befitting for the protagonist Alucard in all his vampiric glory.

The story is simple - Dracula was defeated 100 years ago by the hunter Richter who has since gone missing, but the reappearance of the vampire's cursed castle heralds the return of the dark lord. His half-human son Alucard enters to investigate and try to prevent the return of his evil father. SoTN's story is short and snappy, and delivers it sharply using only a handful of cut scenes and pieces of dialogue. It's amazing to me how potent the story telling is here when modern games spend so much more time and money to do so much less.

We are playing the son of Dracula so it makes sense that we storm into the castle at maximum power. While I normally hate games that start you strong and then strip you down here it is functionally diegetic, it tells us how strong Dracula and vampires in this world must be and we feel like a final boss from any other game which makes for an exciting power trip. When Death strips us down it effectively sets up the game itself as we scour the castle in search of the stolen powers and equipment, along with clues to Dracula's resurrection and the fate of Richter - all the core gameplay loops are cleverly established and tied directly into the story.

While Rondo of Blood had the 'classic' rigid combat design of Castlevania, SoTN builds on it by offering a variety of fighting styles including sword and shield, two handed, fists, or magic, each with complimentary equipment to discover, different attacks, and tactical pros and cons that give you real variety in gameplay. The rigidity is still there but now it feels tactical - the back-slide move gives Alucard a dexterity that's always been missing from the series while also making combat more reactive and faster paced. The huge roster of enemies make for fun fodder too as each require you to make full use of your movement and attacks so nothing feels wasted.

SoTN also makes the leap of fusing that gameplay with the power-up gated, open exploration structure of Super Metroid. This is done primarily through the transformations you acquire and while they each have uses beyond just letting you explore further, they can be a bit clunky and fragile so it's rarely worth using them for anything but. That said the game's liberal use of verticality, the huge map, and the way it expands suddenly at the half-way point really squeezes every drop out of it's physical space, cleverly set up so the second half of the game is more challenging to explore and gets more use out of the mechanics set up in the first half.

In essence Symphony is a very elegant game, from the stunningly detailed sprites, animations, backgrounds, and effects, to the incredible music, the sharp story telling, smooth combat, fun exploration, and a myriad of secrets to discover. Yes there are flaws like the CD buffer rooms, liberal backtracking, the lack of use for some transformations, bosses are a bit easy, and some weapons overpowered - but none of that diminishes the experience and often gives it a distinct flavour more than it spoils the taste. It's clear to see these bones being built on by modern metroidvanias and SoTN is such a solid milestone along the path from where the genre began to where it is that it's little wonder it is held to such a high degree. A very satisfying play from start to finish.

Ragnarok X is the latest Ragnarok Online IP mobile MMO, and falls into the category of auto-play mmo's wearing Ragnarok's skin. If you want fan service cosmetics, generic anime tropes, a story that has nothing to do with the series lore, and self-playing gameplay, this is the one for you.

Where Ragnarok M aimed to be a modernised retelling of the stories that were alluded in the original game, Ragnarok X aims to be closer to the original game experience with a modern take on the old classes and setting. Sadly it ends up being just as much of a hollow experience as M regardless. You'll be level 10 before you've finished talking to the first NPC, showered with gifts, and subject to the usual manipulative gimmicks that mobile games have basically weaponised at this point.

It's a theme park game that has a very linear itinerary of experiences planned out. You will experience that content in an expected order and if you stray from the adventure line there is not only nothing to see but also nothing to do that will make any progress. If you do try to play manually the tiny render distance, lack of waypoints, and expectation for you to stand in very specific unmarked spots to trigger cut-scenes and dialogue makes it impossible to progress.

Gameplay is incredibly dumbed down to ensure that combat can run entirely by itself, though combat is a rare change of pace from running between an endless supply of filler NPC's and enduring shoddy dialogue. The one time the game lore gets a mention is a 2 page text dump of history about Odin and Ymir, otherwise it focuses on typical goofy anime school adventure and nonsensical filler quests about fixing signs because birds stole the wood or something.

The graphics are okay at a glance, though if you look closely at anything other than the cosmetics you'll see the corners they cut. The environments especially have some awful looking models and textures, but it's not like they expect you to be 'playing' the game. The audio is the usual recycled OST from the first game with a few remixes, but the whole thing is just a nostalgia bait.

Personally I don't see the point in these mobile mmo products, I'm told they're fun for people who don't have the time or energy to play an mmo properly so I suppose if you're one of those people who wants to hear RO being played in the background and occasionally tap awful dialogue and manage menus, this is the one for you.

This was the first MMO I'd ever played and it has always remained a surreal but charming experience. What gives RO it's unique flavour is that it was built before WoW set the standard design for MMO's so you have a combination of weird design choices mixed with a bizarre setting that fuses Norse, Christian, and SEA culture with western classical fantasy.

RO is loosely based on a Korean manhwa series which is where the beautiful sprites and art direction come from, but similarities end at the setting and one or two characters. There's very little story in the game other than what is environmental or can be gleaned from the limited NPC dialogue. Instead the main focus of the game is grinding monsters to eventually partake in PvP and PvE challenges. It's thankful then that the core loop is satisfying.

RO is probably most notorious for it's variety of classes, but this is more a result of lazy design. There's really 6 core classes that used to be highly specialised and dependent on one another. The Renewal update however made the game more solo focused and introduced new DPS classes along with '3rd Jobs' which tailored the old classes to the new gameplay without removing the old content. The end result being a mess of old and new design across 3 tiers of play, 2 of which are out dated and sometimes redundant (Eg. the Blacksmiths crafting skills which have no use but haven't been removed).

The three redesigns (Renewal, Revo-Classic, and Zero) have only alienated the old audience while struggling to draw in new crowds and all sides are at an impasse. Gravity want to chase the cash and cut the bloat while surviving old players love the bloat and hate the monetisation, and new players are put off by the entire mess. After 2 failed sequels and 2 auto-play fan service mobile apps, it's clear Gravity would rather try to cultivate a new audience than listening to their fans or invest in RO. All the while successful private servers who give the people what they want regularly see the player base migrating to them.

Overall, while RO had some unique ideas to begin with it's sad to see it grow more homogenised rather than embrace what made it unique. Renewal is still playable albeit dated, obtuse, and bloated, though players are always accommodating and eager to help if you don't mind catching up on 20 years of game. Sadly however, I wouldn't be surprised if Ragnarok continues to quietly drift further into obscurity.

This first official release from Bunstack makes a big statement using a deceptively small package! What starts as a cute little sokoban puzzler about catching bunnies quickly unravels into a surreal, labyrinthian delve into the bizarre lore of the bunburrows in this excellent retro-style brain teaser.

You play as the charming Pâquerette, a rabbit enthusiast accompanied by her aloof friend Ophéline, who wants to catch rabbits! Thus you dive into the burrows and start cornering the buns. Each rabbit follows a simple set of logic when running from you, trying to move in the priority order of away > left > right. From this simple principle the puzzles can be logically deduced, albeit compounded by the tricky level design, winding tunnels the buns can use as shortcuts, and special tools that add a variety of new factors to play with.

The puzzles themselves are very well designed with a steady incline of difficulty that keeps things fresh in every burrow. While I won't spoil anything specific you can rest assured that there is at least 5x more content than at first appears, revealing itself only once you begin experimenting and gradually uncover the secrets of both bun interactions and their burrow. While some secrets may not intuitive, experimentation and perseverance will usually help you find your way (and of course the bustlingly friendly discord group are happy to hint).

This gives the game surprise after surprise after surprise as you naturally begin to realise how x mechanic could have been used earlier, and thus a whole new line of thinking unravels. The inventiveness on display here with secrets within secrets is a genuine treat and serves as a textbook example of what well executed knowledge gates can add to a play experience.

All this presented in beautiful Commodore-style blocky graphics and a top tier chip tune soundtrack by Herbie Puppy. If you enjoy puzzlers this one is well worth picking up, and if all that didn't convince you the low price definitely will!

It's hard to avoid the comparison to Dome Keeper here but to dismiss Wall World as a mere copy doesn't do the game justice.

Here you control a spider mech that climbs up and down the titular wall, stopping at mine entrances which you delve into digging for resources, weapons, and upgrades which allow you to better stave off alien attacks. If we stopped here we'd be an almost one-to-one clone of DK but WW goes much further! You can not only 'move the dome' so to speak, but there's a vast arsenal of interchangeable and upgradable weapons, digging is faster, mines are larger, there are more rewards to dig up, and caves come in a variety of themes and layouts each with a unique resource, and since you're on a timer you have to choose which to delve into according to upgrade needs.

The permanent upgrades you can buy between runs give you the mobility, offense, and utility that is all but required to survive the boss encounters, as well as enabling you to efficiently plunder the caves before your time runs out. On top of that there are quality of life upgrades to be unlocked via blueprint treasures that drive replay value. The downside is you unlock stuff too quickly! Within about 8 hours I had all the base gear at max level. I wouldn't have minded if stuff was more expensive to encourage more runs and spread out the progress as I was really enjoying the grind.

The other major downside is the stability and glitches. Sometimes the gun gets stuck between shooting and sucking and does nothing, sometimes the camera gets stuck zoomed out. Later in the game the auto-mining explosions lag everything and the game starts to shudder and lose frames the longer you play. Even the pretty workshop menu screen was lagging for me with all the animations playing, and sadly the final boss glitched out such that I had to replay the game one more time to trigger the ending credits.

Even with all its flaws Wall World is fun if you enjoy grind focused game loops and a roguelite structure. It offers an exciting and short experience albeit stained by those performance issues, but if you're willing to overlook that you'll be in for a solid 20 hours set in an interesting world with soft storytelling, plenty of build combinations to explore, and treasures to uncover. Well worth a try, especially if you had previously written it off as a 'rip off'.

Since Ragnarok Online first captured the hearts of players in 2002 its creators, Gravity, have struggled to do anything but try and capture its player's wallets since. Eternal Love isn't even trying to be subtle about it's nostalgia baiting, and serves as another lazy cash grab that does as little as possible while adopting anti-player mobile game mechanics.

The game has you returning to some of the familiar locations from the original MMORPG but in name only as everywhere now looks quite different, even if they've tried to capture a similar aesthetic. It does mimic the original art style well and brings back a lot of the iconic monster designs, sound effects, and music - however gameplay is radically simplified.

ROM follows the latest SEA mobile trend of being entirely automated. You can do things manually but the gameplay is built to be so simple and monotonous that you wouldn't actually want to. You set an objective like a quest to complete and the game walks you to where the mobs are and begins auto-grinding and looting, then it walks back to the NPC and waits for you to read the dialogue to continue. The only thing it doesn't automate is item usage, so you will need to glance and check what you're low on from time to time. Later into the game you'll essentially have to pay if you want your character to be able to complete objectives on the first try and keep up with the XP curve.

The end result is an idle game wearing Ragnarok Online's skin that only wants to celebrate the brand and replicate the atmosphere of RO being played by someone behind you. It pretends the worst part of the original game was actually playing it. It's also a bizarre attempt to rewrite what RO was even about by injecting a ton of story and characters that never existed, expanding on the barely-there storylines while wiping out the content that actually mattered, all while trying to charge you for the indignity. A huge step forward in the wrong direction.

Whatever potential the original Alan Wake game had American Nightmare squanders entirely to create an obtuse sandbox shooter that is little more than a DLC with bells on and largely unrelated to the original game.

The original seriously toned story, cinematic narrative, and dark atmosphere is pushed to one side to focus on a dream-like reality which takes a hard turn into cartoonish nonsense. It's almost a parody of the first game as the 'taken' enemies are now an endless horde of zombie substitutes and the mysterious Mr Scratch has become a moustache twirling villain trying to destroy the world.

This spin off feels like filler more than anything. The story was the first game's strongest point and combat its weakest so doing away with the story to focus on combat feels like an over correction - not that the gunplay is meaningfully built on at all as this has a more arcade-style feel to it. Nothing you do seems to matter, the events are largely just dreamy nonsense, and the little story that remains is just as vapid as the gameplay. It's playable but doesn't offer anything special.

I have no idea what the intention of this was or who it was meant for, especially since it only exists to frustrate anyone who enjoyed the first game and wanted a proper conclusion to the story. I can only imagine Remedy needed a cheap and easy follow up to secure some extra cash flow? At least it's easily ignored.

Wake is an author suffering from writers block so at his wife's insistence he takes a holiday trip with her to the picturesque rural town of Bright Falls - but when she goes missing he soon finds himself slipping into a nightmarish world of paranormal events, being stalked by shadowy killers as he tries to find the kidnapper.

The story is classic Stephen King style pulp horror and while there are some great ideas at play with interesting twists and turns, it's slow to make any narrative progress across the game's 6 episodes. There's a harsh divide between story and gameplay with story only progressing in short day time sequences while the night sections make up the bulk of gameplay. Annoyingly this means the story gets put on hold for most of each episode to repeat the same night time events in each chapter: roam around the wilderness, fight shadowy enemies, and pass through an abandoned landmark.

It's also frustrating how repetitive and dull combat is when it's leaned on so heavily to fill the time. The 3 or so types of foes are all handled the same way - either the flashlight hurts them or it weakens the foe so you can shoot them. There's a bit of resource management involved, some cinematic sequences where you drive around, a puzzle or two, but mostly you're just wandering in the woods and fighting shadow people / birds. It starts novel but after a few episodes of the same mechanics and enemies it grows stale.

Overall the ideas at play are genuinely interesting and there are some fantastic set pieces and sequences buried in an original and interesting story, but there's 2 things Remedy consistently have trouble with: innovating around stale gunplay and coming up with an interesting cast of enemies. There's a lot of potential here with the whole light and dark motif it's just a shame they couldn't figure out how to keep innovating past the initial ideas. With the sequel finally on its way and given how strong Control was I'm looking forward to seeing how they can improve on this strong IP.

A cinematic sci-fi thriller that puts you in the role of the ship's computer rather than the human survivors. This makes for a compelling shift in perspective as you and your crewmate try to understand what has gone wrong after a mysterious incident has badly damaged the ship, caused crew to go missing, and leaves you unsure where you are.

Since the ship is heavily automated you have control over the inner workings and the characters need you to open doors, set off fire suppression systems, perform scans etc. so they can progress in the story. Since the incident reset your system you have to go about puzzling how to reconnect to the various doors and ship systems so you can assist them. It makes for fresh and alienating gameplay as you can't even talk in anything other than pre-recorded responses and can only modify the environment around the actors - though you do get a little floating camera through which you can feel like part of the crew and expand your vision/control to places your static cameras can't see.

The story too leaves you feeling somewhat helpless as you can only passively observe events and use your limited control over the ship to assist or impede the characters. The game still hinges on you exploring the tense and spooky environments to solve problems, but in doing so you also become uniquely aware of disturbing events unfolding around the crew with no way to communicate it to them, making things extra tense.

The overall experience was fantastic, there's a bunch of wild twists that make the story fascinating from start to finish. Having to deal with genuinely new and strange scenarios from this weird vantage point made the whole game very memorable, though there are a couple of moments that are made a bit silly by the premise. Still, this game is solid, well written, beautifully presented, and makes for a genuinely fresh experience if you're comfortable with more of a focus on story than gameplay.

Apico is the fusion of a simple crafting game with a genetic algorithm system. There's a smidge of story in there but it's all just to get you into the core loop of exploring, gathering resources, and breeding bees.

That is the tall and short of the entire game. You craft beekeeping equipment, put bees in and let them pollinate nearby flowers. This produces honeycomb which can be fed into other machines to harvest a handful of resources that change depending on which the flowers the bees pollinated. As you play you unlock new tools and equipment, travel to different islands, find new flowers, and discover new bee species which can be crossbred to unlock hidden ones.

The bee breeding is where the algorithm comes in allowing you to share traits and customise stats, albeit very slowly and with the realistic luck of recessive and dominant genetic traits. This lets you trade tolerances to weather, what times of day they are active, the climate they prefer... it's incredibly in depth but largely numeric and not very well illustrated. I ended up accidentally breeding for less variety and had to spend hours trying to breed it back into my hives because I misunderstood how the numbers work and almost soft locked myself.

It's a cute simulation of real life biodiversity and grows increasingly complex as you play, but sadly the game loop becomes arduous fast. The sheer number of traits, species, flowers, and products requires a vast quantity of the same few machines to sort and manage them, each with limited capacity, fiddly pixelated UI's, and a small resolution. Creating just one machine is a slow grind of making intermediary resources that pad the process and doesn't pair well with the exponential growth, and the bees themselves work very slowly.

Overall Apico is doing some ambitious things but quickly outgrows the limitations of its own design. The variety is almost entirely buried in numbers while you use the same few machines to pump out different coloured variants of the same few types of product. Getting anywhere is incredibly slow, repetitive, time consuming, and labour intensive so if you're not gripped by the core loops and genetic algorithm your mileage may vary.

A charming and philosophical dip into science fiction, Outer Wilds has you taking the role of an alien who is coming of age and as tradition holds it's time for you to become a space explorer. You'll go on a little tour of the village, learn about your people, visit the museum of their discoveries and then take to the starry sky to explore your solar system - and my is there much to discover.

This game really captures the essence of exploration and discovery in ways few other games have. The majority of gameplay is more akin to archaeology than anything as you set down on a planet, begin roaming, and learn about the beings that formerly inhabited this system. You'll discover their relics, and uncover how their past affects your future. There's little I can discuss without getting into spoilers but if you can get into the core loop of exploring and you enjoy the lore there's a ton of value to be discovered here.

Interwoven with the history are the puzzles that each planet embodies with underwater ruins on an ocean world, the strange way two planets trade their sand, a world collapsing into itself, deadly tunnels on the edge of the system, and more. Each of the planets makes for an adventure of its own and you have the freedom to explore each in any order at your own leisure, with all the clues you discover and how they are linked being helpfully curated on a screen in your space ship.

It may sound simple and obtuse but Outer Wilds and its breath-taking twists had me snared from the end of the first 'day' exploring its sandbox. The mix of clever environmental puzzles, well written lore, and fractal 'secrets within puzzles within secrets' design makes it a gem of mechanical design meets worldbuilding.