This game lives or dies by how much you value charm. The aesthetic is absolutely choice. It’s creative and every detail is worth taking a few seconds to comb over resulting in an earned “aww well that’s nice.” It genuinely takes me back to being a kid going ham with the bristol board. Gameplay is split into 3 parts. First being the regular level to level completion. It’s got the blinding polish you'd expect from a nintendo 2D platformer, except about a thousand times easier. The second is the reverse side of every completed stage which is a time trial to find The Poochy Pups. This part is quite a bit of fun, but, while I think seeing what all of the crafts were made out of is a funny concept, all the levels end up just looking like more bland versions of the stage it’s based off of. I can only laugh at the idea of Yoshi-O’s or whatever so many times. Lastly there is searching for crafts, which can only be done when both the aforementioned levels in a world are completed. This ends up being the most optional and most tedious gameplay option. You are given quite a few things to find in the levels, but are only allowed to find them one at a time. This leads to going through levels upwards to 5 times just looking for crap in the background. It’s the most braindead part of an already trivial game. It can be fun when you just wanna dink around for a bit, but doing it all in succession kind of messes up the pacing. This game, with all of its game modes, is quite long. A lot longer than you’d expect. It really wrings dry every conceivable gimmick you could apply this art direction to.

This game makes me feel like a baby child (complementary).