I'm too old to be part of this game's demographic, but I can imagine it's a damn good time for kids in class and if it came out at the right time in my life, I probably would've obsessed over it. Krunker is fast and twitchy and has loads of custom content to constantly recontextualize and add variety to what is, at its base, a solid and skillful set of mechanics which feel fantastic from the moment you figure out how to bhop.

Unfortunately, I stopped playing soon after starting. The moment it started trying to sell me on NFT nonsense, I was out. As much fun as this is, it's not worth the moral hit of adding to the playerbase of a game pushing something that evil. I'm not sure how to give a score to something where my only negative thoughts come from the monetization scheme and not the bare experience of playing the game, so I'll leave this unrated.

Hell ye :) Really good kids sandbox-y puzzler, very practical puzzles where you're just using this living environment and the tools you have to solve them but limited in scope so that it feels like kids could play and understand it, while still prodding at their brain. You have to consider the environment with the time, elements, other Bugsnax, etc and how each of these things interact with each other, which along with the cartoonish but human feeling characters with each of their individual routines and goals makes the world feel really alive. It puts effort into immersing you and caring about everything around you which I think is kind of rare for stuff as explicitly kid centered as this? (Good if you're a fully grown adult as well, just feels intended for younger people. Same feel as Sponge-Bob yk)

If I somehow come in possession of a child, they're living on a strict diet of this, mountain dew and the short film “2 into 1”

VVVVVV has faded into the background somewhat despite its positive critical reception upon launch, and that's a shame: I think more developers should take notes, as it succeeds at appealing to both casual and competitive audiences. From a casual viewpoint, VVVVVV takes a classic deconstructed concept ("what if we removed jumping in 2D platforming?") and expands upon this in meaningful ways with little downtime. I've often complained about the lack of tech-skill in 2D platformers, but VVVVVV remains a key exception because it's simple to pick up (just gravity flip and walking as controls) yet difficult to master due to its weightiness. Additionally, it never feels stale with its utilization of gravity flipping by innovating upon this with classic obstacle escalation, introducing flippers, screen wrapping, teleporters, and auto-scrolling in respective levels as just a few married mechanics. On the other hand, from a competitive viewpoint, VVVVVV presents itself as an almost perfect beginner's speedrunning game thanks to the general lack of RNG; all rooms begin from the same state once entered, following the same pattern every time. Upon exiting, the rooms will always reset to that exact same state playing the same pattern, meaning that timing cycles don't have to be accounted for on a broader scale and players can just focus on correctly routing the first time around. Due to the simplified routing and committal movement (since you can't flip mid-air and have very restrained control over aerial drift), players must both react quickly enough to meet single room cycles and carefully plan out input timings. It certainly helps that a solid speedrun takes less than an hour and individual sectors can be practiced as "challenges" added in a recent update.

Notice how I said "general lack of RNG" however, because this is where VVVVVV throws a wrench into the works. One of the game's twists is that upon rescuing three crewmates (i.e. clearing 3 of the 4 main sectors), the player is thrown into a 2nd intermission dubbed "The Gravitron," an arcade-like section that bounces the player between two flippers as they must dodge incoming projectiles without any vertical control. This particular intermission is the only case of RNG (in the form of randomized projectile waves) throughout the game, and unfortunately sticks out like a sore thumb in an otherwise completely consistent speedrunning experience. As an endless arcade sidemode that can be unlocked via collecting every trinket, I think it fulfills this role as a reward well, but when considering it from a deathless run perspective, it is an absolute killer in the middle of the run that cannot be easily planned for. Outside of this complaint though, I find very few things that I can fault VVVVVV for. The game's simple visuals are bright and catchy, it's got a great sense of humor with its room names and stylized pixel hazards, and the soundtrack goes harder than it has any right to: Pressure Cooker and Potential for Anything never fail to blow me away with their energetic melodies. This is an easy recommendation for anyone looking to get into speedrunning platformers despite the need to heavily practice for the Gravitron, and it's an even easier recommendation for general players looking to understand how indies can thoroughly yet succinctly explore creative yet familiar concepts in a cohesive package.