A fantastic puzzle game with a really solid gimmick and so much to explore. The map is a bit confusing at first and I wish it was a bit easier to get around, but thats a minor complaint in an incredibly rewarding puzzler. I also like that you don't need to solve every puzzle to complete the game. One day I'll go back and tackle the morse code and like code breaking puzzles but until then, I'm satisfied with my game.

A perfectly satisfying puzzle platformer that offers puzzles both simple and complex and even hidden. A great little game easily cracked in under 6 hours.

This is my second favorite Mario game and my absolute favorite mainline title. More than that, I think it's objectively the best Mario game ever made, and one of the most perfect games ever made, period.

This game is a love letter to Mario, fully embracing his history from early console gaming to today. However, it doesn't mire itself in that history, but instead builds something new. It really feels like everything that's been learned from Mario games of the past has been taken into account and built upon into a mechanically honed, delightfully designed adventure. There's so many nooks and crannies to explore and exploring them is a delight. Each world is dense with secrets and the game takes the fetters off early, allowing you to spend as much time doing whatever you want in each world between the plot. More than that, finishing the plot of each world unlocks even more secrets and makes changes to the environment, giving incentive to go back and explore those changes. Even more than /that/, finishing the game gives the option to unlock even more moons and secrets and platforming challenges in each world.

Each world is cleverly designed and even after finishing the game I kept finding entirely new areas I had never seen before with even more things to do.

This game rewards you for playing it, but just exploring the worlds is a reward in and of itself.

This is a game that is so approachable for both children and adults, and even offers an option for couch co-op play. The difficultly curve is so well-balamced and the game helps you improve your skills using its game design.

Even for very young children, I can imagine just giving them the reigns and letting them run around the wide open levels, playing with all the creatures they can possess and just enjoying the scenery. The game is also accessible because there are so MANY moons to collect and so few that you NEED to collect that if you're struggling with a specific platformer segment or puzzle type you can easily skip it and find a moon that's easier to get to.

It helps that this game is gorgeous and runs without a hitch on the Switch. The polish really shines off of every square inch of the detailed environments and character design.

I heavily recommend this game for any interested player, with the caveat that those who haven't played a 3D platformer may struggle a bit in some of the more vertical worlds. It's just unrelentingly fun.

An addictive and visually striking game with a pleasingly low rez art style. The combat is challenging and in some areas feels unfair, but death is not incredibly punishing and with extensive exploration you find more and more tools to upgrade your player and your weapons.

The game gives you very little direction on where to go or what to do when you get there, so the early hours are spent muddling around and getting a feel for the world. This lack of direction paired with a difficult-to-understand overworld map can be frustrating, especially paired with the ease that you can be killed by enemies. It's very easy to get lost in this game if you have a poor sense of direction.

The music is a great complement to a magitech apocalyptic world being overgrown with natural plantlife and monsters. The lack of any dialogue really underlines the contemplative and in some places bleak atmosphere of this richly colored world. Exploring is often rewarded with secret paths and new areas, and taking the time to poke around every corner feels very rewarding as you learn the visual language of the game and how to read hints in the environment.

Hyper Light Drifter's original release was notable as taking place at the beginning of a huge indie boom characterized by artistically stylish and difficult games. You can trace it's influence and see it's shared roots with other exploration-heavy games like Tunic.

This game does feel a bit unpolished with an uneven difficultly and in some places clunky and frustrating combat mechanics. Given it's the studio's first showing, this is expected, and what is here is great. Ultimately, I'd recommend it for players who like a challenge and are comfortable taking full reign in exploring an open world.

Objectively this is too many stars but this game was just so delightfully strange. Nothing at the time was doing anything similar.

The gimmick here is that you have to create your own monsters to do minigames to save an amazing island. As you get better scores and unlock more minigames you get more accessories to add to your monsters. The accessories range from body textures to hair to sneakers.

The best part of the gimmick is that you are straight-up drawing the body parts of your monster. It offers an unheard-of amount of customization for creature design as you painstakingly doodle horrible lumpy nightmare creatures and paste tiger stripes and googly eyes onto them. Different accessories and body shapes can change your stats, so you can build monsters that are better at running, flying, etc. Theres a lot of experimentation in building monsters, and all of them will look delightfully jank. No amount of artistic experience can prepare you for drawing with a gamecube controller.

My favorite monster I made was just a head with red sneakers, anime hair, and a beak. Terrible stats (it was literally just a floating head) but I loved my horrible anime rooster friend.

There is a bit of an uneven difficulty curve as you progress, but in a game that encourages grinding for monster accessories I think it actually feeds back into the core conceit: building cooler, weirder, stronger monsters.

It's definitely not a /good/ game, but it is a really interesting one.

My personal favorite Kirby game, and one of the most charming Kirby games for sure. I love experimenting with different power combinations, and I'd love to see this mechanic revisited some day.

The blocky, bright, and colorful visuals of the N64 really enhance the duplo vibe of this world, and though they feel outdated today there's a charm to them that I find complements Kirby nicely.

The stages themselves are fun to play and are enhanced with charming elements like riding a gondola with a waddle dee or escaping a worn down castle filling with sand. These quiet introspective moments and exciting action sequences make each stage memorable.

The game is filled with little secrets, like hidden tomatos, which can make replaying the stages like little scavenger hunts.

There are some boss battles that ramp up the difficulty curve as you near the end which could prove frustrating, especially for younger players. The game as a whole is very accessible for younger children, so this last minute difficulty curve can be rocky.

The multiplayer minigames are fun diversions, but can be clunky to play. The art based minigame is my standout for sure.

I think this title is also interesting from a Kirby design direction, as a 3d Kirby was obviously a big departure from the formula, and the devs stuck to 2.5D side scrolling adventure as much as possible.

Playing this game and 2022's Kirby and the Forgotten Land back-to-back, it's really cool to see where 3D Kirby games started and where they are now.

I'm surprised by how well this game holds up even today, so I would definitely recommend this game to any Kirby fans or anyone interested in N64 titles.

All I want is more games like this. I love games about solving mysteries and though the mechanics here aren't difficult, they serve their purpose in highlighting the real star of the show: the beautifully drawn and entertainingly acted cast of weird characters. The writing is the real star of the show here and it was relentlessly charming.

I was satisfied with the story and how the mystery wrapped up. As with most good mysteries, the solving of it was wrapped up in better understanding the characters and the setting.

This was just an unabashedly fun point and click mystery, and I immediately turned around to check out other games in the series. I can only hope this series gets more attention, I want to see more of these!!

Weird little game about talking to ghosts. Maybe you'll smooch???????

The writing is suprisingly emotional in some places and I teared up and was filled with dread in turns. A well-realized cast of characters makes this game worthy of multiple playthroughs to see the full conversations and dialogue choices you can have with each date.

The visuals are stark but striking and incredibly effective for setting the tone, which is a huge bonus.

It's such a short game you can finish it in an evening, but it's just as long as it needs to be.

I recommend picking this one up for folks who like weird little games with good writing.

Make sure you like reading before you commit to this one. The atmosphere is opressing and dim and eldrich, and the characters that you meet are the same. I got very into planning optimal routes to build my funds to fuel my exploring of the underground.

Theres a lot to discover if you have the patience for it, but this is the kind of management and exploration sim that builds steam as it goes.

The setting is the big draw here, which is good because it's so well realized.