DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

Expected a simple puzzle game. The difficulty shot up WAY high since level 1. Simple but clever and hard to find solutions with new mechanics coming up often enough to stay fresh. Only got stuck on 2 out of 50 puzzles.

Overall, very fun and hard.

DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

NOTE: The time played is the one recorded at time of review and it includes all main levels and a few custom maps (which may or may not have taken longer)

Have you ever vibed with a game as soon as you started it? I hadn't felt like this with a game since The Witness, and yet this time it might have been even stronger.
From the non-euclidian environment (aka being teleported all over the place and having to create a mental map of connections and shortcuts), through the rule discovery segments (which take place all throughout the whole game and not just at the beginning since you keep learning more rules and finding new puzzle elements even in the "post-game"), to the puzzles themselves (which always felt creative and fresh, even if sometimes too easy and other times unfairly difficult) I loved every second of it.
Imagine my surprise when while doing clean-up I find out there's a Level 2 that is even bigger than the first. And then there are more smaller official levels and once I'm done with those I keep wanting more and more, so I do what I never do. I turn to community content, and it's actually good?
I can't get this game out of my head. I was waiting to finally be done with it before writing a review, but it just wasn't happening and I had to get some of these thoughs on paper before I exploded.

Overall, I can't recommend this game enough for puzzle fans. I'll be singing its praise for years to come.

DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

After playing through all of Submachine Legacy I found out this was the only game not included. I was a bit hesitant to play it because I knew it reused most rooms from the other games and because its main selling point was being a game to play with the whole community while it was being updated throughout the years. Even so, I decided to give it a shot and boy am I glad I did.
I now have in my possesion two full pages of notes filled with numbers, clues, drawings and scribbles incomprehensible to anyone who has not played the game. And I'm also proud that I only had to look for help with two things and they were not solutions to puzzles, but just items laying around I had failed to see.

Overall, a most enjoyable experience.

DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

I wanted to like this game. I expected a "Kid's First Detective Game" with at least a couple of interesting mysteries or twists, but got none of that.
All the sesuction segments are bland, strightforward and hand-holdy. It may be argued that this is by virtue of it being a game designed for children, but having the gameplay be as simple as a multiple choice without consequences for wrong answers allows for mysteries to be complex yet easy to solve.
The most enjoyable part of the game was being able to comunicate directly with the Pokemon while playing as Pikachu. Reminiscent of Pokepark. And a couple of the sidequests had unexpected results.

Overall, a big disappointment. Would not recommend even for children for how boring of a slog it was.

DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

I think I got too overwhelmed by the amount of puzzles.
I would love having been able to interact more with the meta puzzles and the narrative because those had me hooked, but they were so few and far between a bunch of sokoban puzzles with no undo and a limited amount of restarts that got me tense, stressed and not having a good time.
I still have my big notes document in case I decide to go back and try to play it again, so I will refrain from watching it on Youtube for now.

Overall, sad I could not get into it as much as others seem to have.

DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

NOTE: The playtime includes the Picnic Panic DLC. I should also mention I played this after finishing Sea of Stars, which might affect my understanding and enjoyment of the story, world and lore.

I went in expecting a basic side-scrolling platformer. I got exactly what I expected, PLUS a completely unexpected whole metroidvania on top.

Starting with the simple levels, the game felt quite basic. Cloudstepping was interesting and fun, the dialogue quips with the bosses were entertaining; but what stood out the most was the Shopkeeper, very funny but also deep and interesting stories (it was also curious to find elements of those stories in the overworld)

I knew there was going to be a way to go back to old levels because I kept seeing secrets that I couldn't reach with my current skills, so once I got to the new artstyle I assumed I would be able to repeat levels with all skills unlocked. Imagine my surprise when the game kept going until it seemed to reach an ending by revealing the loop.

I was even more surprised when the game revealed it's real twist by turning the game into a metroidvania. Making everything an interconnected map with collectibles and with a different level layout for both artstyles.

Finding collectibles was fun, but the reward for getting them felt underwhelming. As did most of the upgrades, making currency feel relatively useless.

The story was slightly deeper than it seemed in the first chapter, but still quite simple. It doesn't really take itself too seriously. I did, however, very much enjoy the parallels with Sea of Stars. Hearing returning tracks, seeing familiar enemies and particularly re-exploring the Sunken Shrine andacquiring its Music Note. It was nice to see where all the clues were planted for the sequel.

Speaking of unserious, the DLC is as silly as it can be. It's still as fun as the base game, plus more minigames (funnily enough, this game is the first time I learned how punch-out actually works) and the reward for getting all DLC collectibles is a bit more interesting, or at least it would be if I wanted to play New Game +.

Overall, this game is not the best platformer, nor is it the greatest metroidvania, but it is fun enough and along with the humor it is most definitely enjoyable and recommended.

DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

I expected just a port of the Flash classics, but the game puts a lot of effort into adding content to connect all the entries toghether into a beautiful package with tons of secrets.
It was one of those impulsive insta-buys, but I'm happy to report I do not regret it at all.

Overall, super fun game for returning players and newcomers alike.

DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

I went in expecting expecting a top-down metroidvania, but I got a side-scrolling metroidvania instead. That is my fault, though, as I mistook this game for Crypt Custodian, which is this developer's upcoming project.

I find this game's upgrade system very interesting. Every time you find an upgrade point hidden somewhere in the overworld you get to choose between three possible upgrades. This makes every secret equally as important and valuable, be it in the begining of the game or close to the end. The only problem I find with this system is that the pool of upgrades does not match the amount of upgrade points in the game. If I understand corrwectly, this is so that you can always prioritize upgrades for the abilities that you commonly use, and ignore the ones you rarely utilize. But going into the game without this knowledge, I assumed I would eventually have to get the upgrades I didn't care about, therefore wasting points I could have spent on base stat upgrades like health.

Additionally to these upgrade points, you can spend currency to buy base stat upgrades (health, sword damage, and arrow damage) which increase in price with each purchase. This makes sense until you realize that the prize also increases when you upgrade these stats with upgrade points, therefore making it more profitable to buy upgrades in the shop first and only THEN getting upgrade points rather than the other way around. These shop upgrades also seem to lack a ceiling. This means that the game always has a place to sink your currency and also allows you to farm currency in order to get stronger in case you are struggling against a boss. This would make for a great accesibility option, but it should be advertised as such, because in my case I bought these upgrades without thinking much about it and, despite playing in hard, I still ended up demolishing through bosses before they could even change into their second phase. This made later fights a bit of a disappointment. I could have refrained from attacking in order to experience the fights correctly, but I believe it shouldn't be on the player to balance their own experience.

Currency can also be used to buy a couple upgrades for your map, like markers. But once you buy all three of them (which are quite cheap) money can only be used on stats. The only other upgrades you can buy are for your airship, but these take no currency and instead use macguffins, so they end up working just as metroidvania gating mechanics.

The upgrades your character gets generally improve your movement, which might be this game's greatest asset. You also get two different types of arrows which are needed to get through certain sections. They are, however, very cumbersome to use and quite useless during combat. I see this as a missed opportunity since the airship upgrades are definitely necessary during bossfights and they make for great attack patterns.

Most bossfights had interesting attacks and having healthbars is appreciated. Minor enemies, though, felt just like annoyances during exploration. The world was well designed with secret paths abound, though the puzzles were a bit lacking. Having islands connect together creating new paths where there were only dead-ends made for a great "explore-get upgrade-connect island-more to explore" loop, particularly during the third and fourth islands.

The story was mediocre, though there might be more lore than what I managed to gleam; but the characters, on the other hand, were amazing. Each of them filled with personality, backstory and character arcs. A smile came to my face every time one of them showed up. I never manged to unpetrify that one character, I don't know what I missed, but I still feel bad about it.

Overall, despite my complaints I enjoyed this game quite a bit. I recommend it to all metroidvania fans, just go in with two things in mind: Try to keep your shop upgrades to a minimum in order to not have a completely unbalanced experience; and when getting upgrade points, always prioritize the ones you care about and ignore the ones you won't use.

DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

The more time goes on, the more bland these games start to feel.
I enjoy getting tidbits of lore and I like the fact hat they have ARGs going on in the background, even if I don't participate in them myself.
But as far as the actual game goes, the only part that I really enjoy is the backtracking at the end, reexploring all zones to find the secrets and achievements.

Overall, a good sequel to its predecessors.

DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

I went in expecting a small metroidvania, but it turned out to be a big adventure game with a couple of metroidvania elements.

The beggining of the game is quite slow and linear as you get a grasp of the main mechanics, setting up the expectation that the whole game will be a linear experience, but soon after the game opens up allowing you to go and explore pretty much most islands, although most dungeons will be gated by either the shovel, its upgrade or the very versatile magic bottle.

Once you have gotten access to all 3 of these tools, however, you are enirely free to tackle the rest of the game in whatever order you wish and it will all start falling like dominoes. The NavPearl would be amazing if not for the fact that you can just find the items without them. It would be cooler if you had to dig in specific but incospicuous places so that the pearls were actually necessary.

The game is also full of secret crevices. They are fun and satisfying to find, although I wish they had had more unique collectibles in them since most of them contain just chests full of coins.

The coins themselves are used to buy a couple of hats with unique properties, which is cool, and to buy and decorate a house, which is really just a money sink. And even after having bought every single thing available, I finished the game with over 3000 coins to spare. I guess I was more thorough than most at finding secret coin chests, so I was surprised to see a money farming guide even exists.

Speaking of farming, one of the items you must collect are enemy drops. In my experience, however, they required no farming. Just killing all enemies on each screen the first time through was enough to have all of them dropped. I am unsure if I was just lucky or if it is hard-coded to be this way. If so, I am happily impressed.

Having the final dungeon be something that opens up slowly as you keep coming back with more mcguffins is a cool idea, but it was so out of the way that after my first visit I didn't go back until the end of the game.

Oh right, the story. It was... meh? The main character has no dialogue and no personality (two things that are not always linked to each other), the parrot has a designated conversation button, but it is reserved as a hint system instead of making jokes or comments about the current room that could have shown more personality. It was aesy to figure out who he really was, but that might just be because of enough knowledge of tropes. The flashbacks and introductory cutscene were great, if a bit long. Other than that, the god vs god story is just an excuse to have the game happen and that is ok.

Overall, the game was quite enjoyable. It gave way more freedom than expected. I'd be more likely to compare it to a Zelda or an adventure game more than a metroidvania.

DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

Expected a light and easy metroidvania. Turned out to be very complex (as in it had a lot of different abilities mapped to many buttons) Had a very strong focus on platforming challenges, HARD but satisfying. Highly customizable difficulty.

Overall, very fun. No big downside.

DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

NOTE: I am completely aware of the controversies surrounding the writer of this series and it is because of this reason and because of my unstable monetary situation that I resorted to piracy to acquire this game and therefore its price won't be a factor in this review. I will limit myself to talking about the game as a piece of media.

Having only been able to play this months after its release on other platforms, I had plenty of preconcieved expectations based on other people's comments and reviews. I basically went in expecting a AAA slop game with a basic Harry Potter skin on it. As it turns out, reality wasn't that far off.

The game does have an open world riddled with collectables, some of them cooler than others. For instance, the Merlin Trials are interesting enough the first few times you see them, but they start to get repetitive after a while, a couple of them try to innovate a bit but they are the minority. The Ancient Magic Hotspots are a good oportunity for some platforming mazes, but most of them can be circumvented once you have the broom. Chests in enemy camps are a good idea, but the rewards are not good enough for anything other completionism or minor aesthetics.

Speaking of aesthetics, The character customization is ok, but what I really appreciate is being able to change the appearance of any equipment without having to sacrifice stats. Upgrading armor is ok in concept, but it using drops from animals you have to farm in real time is not great. It also, feels like you unlock it too late.

The game has a lot of mechanics and they are unlocked slowly over the course of the game and many arrive way too late to be useful or leaving you with no time to enjoy them. Avada Kedavra is only unlocked a couple of missions before the end of the game, for example, which makes some sense since it's very overpowered.

All of the curses are very strong, really. And using them feels like cheating or like activating an easy mode. The rest of the spells were fun, I just wish there was an easier way to switch between all of them or more incentive to do so. Using stealth was too easy and too strong, but satisfying. I also wish there were more utility spells, even if they were just "keys" for "locks" and I also wish there had been more enemy types.

The story was mediocre protagonist is chosen one. Bad guy is evil and racist. He has powers because of a misguided young student from the past. But I did enjoy the characters. The teachers with their personalities and optional backstories were interesting and the classmates and their questlines had fun setpieces and stakes.

Exploring the castle and finding the pages with lore was probably one of my favorite activities as well as decorating the room of requirement even if the controls for it were quite clunky. I made a whole section for plants and potions that I never used becuase I never had the need to get a boost in combat.

Overall, yes. This is a AAA slop game with a Harry Potter skin, but the game is okay enough that if you are a fan of the saga I think it's worth to live through this magical power fantasy at least once. Otherwise, it's okay to skip it.

DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

I went in with no expectations, really. In fact, I do not even remember where I found out about this game, I just know that it's been on my "to play later" list for a while and I finally decide to crack it open. And I'm glad I did, because it was highly enjoyable.

The game has around 150 cryptography puzzles that vary in both complexity and difficulty. This is to be expected as the game is intended to be a non-linear experience. Many times you will find yourself stumped on a puzzle that makes no sense, only to later find a clue in an unrelated thread that makes everything fall into place.

It's worth pointing out that the game gives you all the tools you need to solve puzzles without having to open a browser with 10 tabs to translate morse, binary, hex, etc. The only exceptions I had to make were for a couple of anagrams I was personally struggling with and for one morse code without spaces. (The ammount of possibilities is just to great to do it by hand)

The game does have a hint system. There are 3 hints available for each puzzle (that totals over 300 hand-crafted hints) and their only ! cost is time. First hint takes a minute to unlock, second takes 2, and third takes 3. I assume this is to encourage more thinking on the same puzzle or on a different one during the wait. The problem is that the hints' usefulness is highly variable. Hint 1 usually just points out what is the useful data you should be looking at, hint 2 tends to mention which tool to use or the amount of characters, and hint 3 tells you the specific trick of the puzzle without giving away the answer. So it's annoying when you are stuck on a puzzle and after waiting for a hint it just says "six red letters." Yes I know that, but what do I do with them? And then I have to wait for another hint to say "Use a tool." Of course, but which one?

Lore-wise, it's a very simple "AI gone rogue" story, but it does the job and it surprisigly doesn't seem to have evil intentions. Serviceable, but not a strong suit.

I would have appreciated it if the game had any sort of audio. A background track and some sound puzzles would have been welcome. So feel free to play this with a playlist of your choice running.

! The ending does take into consideration the amount of hints used, but after seeing all endings the difference is so minor that it's not worth bothering to avoid hints.

Overall, I had tons of fun with the puzzles and the non-linearity made it feel metroidvania-esque at times. If it ever gets a paid release, I'll buy it day one. Highly recommended for puzzle lovers.

DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

Expected a short and silly zelda-like adventure game. Got a short and silly puzzle heavy game and I'm not complaining about it.
Item dungeons were fun, but felt confused by the existence of hard side paths/shortcuts.
Item interactions were very interesting, but felt confused because many puzzles could be broken with them.
Master cave was an awesome experience requiring all tools and a lot of thinking.
Loved the ultimate weapon and true ending acquired by smacking [REDACTED].
Then I decided to try doing the 2 item runs and that's when everything fell into place. The shortcuts made the dungeons shorter, yet still interesting on repeat playthroughs. Puzzles required actual solving with the lack of one of the main tools. The final bossfight adapting to your current arsenal was cool. Routing these runs was very fun.
I'm not too into speedrunning, but getting the 15 minute achievement is not too tight. I still didn't have much fun doing the 3 attempts it took me, though.

Overall, good puzzles and silly jokes all around. Very much recommend doing the 4 main runs.

DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

I expected a language with many symbols, meanings, structures and possible dialogues. The game does have a lot of symbols but once out of the tutorial you realize many (if not most) of them don't have a meaning/definition/use within the game. I understand that it is intentional that you can never get to know all of the intrincacies of an old extinct language, yet it's still a bit disappointing.
I also understand the linearity of the questions you are allowed a response to, as writing an answer for all possible prompts with correct syntax would be an insurmountable task; yet I still would have a enjoyed having a couple of side conversations about tangential topics that might not matter to the main path/story of the game.
Where I really think this game fails is at is how direct it is with what all symbols mean and wich ones you should use on your next prompt. There's almost no work from the player unless you force yourself to not open the notebook. I think the game would benefit from having an everpresent hint as to what the next topic of discussion should be but have the option to translate what the terminal answered and/or what your next prompt should be only for when you are feeling stuck or lost.
The good ending attempts to do a part of this by not having notebook pages attached to it at all, but by doing that there is no hint towards which is the only sentence that will get a response despite the fact that there would be many ways to continue the conversation.
The moment that felt the greatest while playing was when I had a streak of 4 consecutive questions without having opened the journal all flowing naturally like a conversation (or as naturally as a conversation with a computer in a different language can be) and then finally opening the notebook and seeing those four pages stating and outlining all of the deductions and logical steps I had done and followed on my own.

Overall, this was a good game for how cheap it is and I'm it exists and that I played it, but would probably recommend a few other "language games" over this one.