Lone fungus!
Tldr: Fun platforming challenges, great exploration and abilites, lacking bosses and skill expression in combat.
PS: If you don't like bosses rolling over start on hard mode instead of normal.

An enjoyable metroidvania that focuses a lot on exploration, freedom and collecting a bunch of items. There are bosses but personally i think they are one of the weaker aspects of the game. The progression basically allows you to just go any way you like at any point with very few hindrances. You'll come across items you cannot collect and the occasional dead end but it really felt like i could just wander and get lost basically wherever my heart desired.

It has little structure except some hints of where to find mushrooms that can help guide you on your way. And i quite liked that honestly. The story is told by talking to mushroom statues or reading tablets around the world. Story wise it is very basic and i think the reason for that is to complement the very open ended nature of the game. I personally would have liked some more story events as at times it felt like i was exploring for the sake of exploring. Kind of loosing my purpose and drive if i wandered too much. There were some reminders when talking to statues where they would tell you but there was no real feel of urgency at any point. That can be both a good and a bad thing i suppose. It made many things more relaxed but also slightly less meaningful.

However there are a TON of items scattered across the map and it is packed to the brim with stuff to find. So the large map never felt empty to me. One of the most fun things to find are these teleportation gates that take you into the loopyland dimension where there is an obstacle course to complete to grab some type of shard(still don't know what they are for after the first ending) These are some of the most fun i had in the game because they can actually get challenging and they use the movement abilities you collect in unique ways. I have not beaten all of them yet but they let you combine and use most of your abilities maybe not to the fullest. But far enough for me to be pretty satisfied. And i think the genius part about them being in a different dimension is that the obstacle courses do not clutter up the map. If they were laid out across the map then backtracking would become much more of a tedium i believe. So these are great!

Now for some of the things i did not like as much. The bosses, there are quite a few bosses scattered around the map and finding one was always a positive interaction. The problem i have with the bosses is that they are too easy and too similar to each other. Now that they were too easy is a very subjective statement and im not trying to boast that im the ultimate gamer or something here but the problem is that you get a ton of really creative abilities and movement options. But the bosses barely challenge you to use any of them. You can beat most of the bosses with your basic loadout at the start of the game. And this is a huge missed opportunity i think. The warp gates with obstacle courses did a much better job of pushing the movement abilities then the bosses did pushing the combat abilities. And i think this is a huge opportunity to improve the next game that is in development. Some of the arenas had some platforms and spikes. But so many of the bosses ended up being a blob that you can pogo on that shoots a few bullets your way in a half assed attempt to kill you. In my opinion they need to get a lot more agressive, intimidating, and varied. (like the last boss, that one was actually great) I understand that i am asking for impossible standards from a solo developer here. But just a step in the right direction could make a huge difference in how satisfying it is to beat that boss. Another note is that i played on the normal(recommended) difficulty. If you plan on playing this game and think hollow knight has a good difficulty i would highly recommend starting with the hard difficulty instead. This is something i regret and might have changed my opinion on the bosses a bit. The issues about them being similar and not promoting the use of the new abilities and charms(sorry relics) still persists however and i think that this is the games biggest major weakpoint.

I liked the music, it was nice to listen too. Most of the tracks did not get tedious even after listening to them for a while and they fit the mushroomy cozy low threat enviroment of the game. One nitpick i have is that the music for sitting at a savepoint is amazing, BUT it cuts off after you leave the save point. If i got to hear the full save jingle even if i just stopped by a save for 1 second to heal. That would make my brain do many happy chemical.

Some of the dialogue did not flow as part of the world and felt like "go grab item x because reason y" and that is hard to avoid completely but i always like when games mask this well.

In conclusion i loved this game. I had a great time and i am excited to see what the developer decides to do with the second game.