A game about a girl, Izzy dealing her with grandmother's illness by writing in her diary. To help cheer herself up, she practices writing by creating a fictional world called Estoria. Thus, the game is broken into two sections:

a) The diary sections. You play as a representation of Izzy, jumping between words on the diary page. You jump on certain words to advance dialogue, and there's a few other interactive elements. For instance, there's one part where Izzy writes about her birthday. She draws a birthday cake with candles, and you're presented with the sentence "I blew out the candles." You take the word "blew" and drag it across the candles to extinguish them.

There are some sections where the interactive elements are used very neatly. For instance, there's one point where Izzy jumps on a sentence, only for it to fall out beneath her, sending her plummeting. This serves as a reflection of her mental state at the time.

b) The Estoria sections. Interspersed between the diary sections, you play as a character Izzy has written, living in the world of Estoria. You are tasked with finding Fireflies to defeat a dragon. The Estoria sections are meant to be allegorical, reflecting Izzy's own situation and mental state. You traverse a lava area when she's angry, a grassy area when she's in a good mood, etc.

The gameplay here consists of moving obstacles out of the way using a magic book that allows Izzy to use the "power of words." You can use "repair" to fix a broken bridge, "rise" to make a rock pillar start ascending (with you on top), etc.

Unfortunately, neither the diary nor the Estoria sections have much gameplay to speak of. They're more like walking simulators, where you go from left to right and occasionally use some light gimmicks to advance. I personally found the diary sections more engaging, because there is a greater degree of verticality and creativity when you're jumping between words on the page.

The story is one people might find tropish or sappy, but I think it wrapped up nicely and personally found it heartening. It deals in topics that a lot of people can relate to, I think. Ultimately I once again preferred the diary sections, which discuss Izzy's real life, to the Estoria sections, which deal in metaphor which might be too on the nose for some.

Nevertheless it's still an enjoyable game, especially if you like narratives.

Played through this one slowly over two weeks and really enjoyed it. The thing that sticks out most to me is the art style, which is stellar. The backgrounds are so varied and beautiful that at certain points I would just stop and stare.

Music is a highlight as well. Specific tracks of note are those that play during the "Escape" sections at each major goal and the music that plays during the ending.

The story is relatively simple but is nevertheless capable of resonating emotionally.

I more or less was fine with the gameplay. To be honest, I'm not that great at platformers, but I made it work. I liked the game's save system which allowed you to create checkpoints almost anywhere, at the expense of Mana. When I died (and I died ALOT), I could try again without needing to do much backtracking, etc. There were some moments that frustrated me (you don't get checkpoints during the escape sequences for instance), where I had to put in a lot of tries to get through, but it didn't break the experience.

Overall I'm glad I played the game; should've done so sooner, it's been in my Steam library for so long. Will play the Sequel sometime.