It has it's charm, certainly a beautiful world visually. But it's not polished.

You're constantly fighting the terrain (felt like I was playing Death Stranding at times) which sometimes could work in your favor as I found you could sometimes scale some walls and get to the next area without going the intended way. I did also manage to get to one area (the intended way) where I had no way to recharge the spirit, so had to reload to my last save.

Probably the thing that made it less enjoyable for me was how it didn't seem to respect your time. The biggest offender is recharging the spirit (which is a thing you're constantly doing). You can't just activate a flower and continue, you had to activate it then stand there while it opened and have the spirit recharge you. Key sections where the fox would become sick or hurt would slow the fox right down to a crawl while still making you walk massive distances like that. Falling into the water meant slowly dog paddling your way out and then watching the animation of the fox shaking before you could continue. Key scenic sections where you're just running forward, I get that I'm meant to be taking in the music and the visuals in those parts but I'm just holding forward in those parts and they just go on for a bit too long imo.

Last criticism would be that I found it a bit too directionless in parts.

Having said that, there were many moments and aspects that I also enjoyed. For a short game it was an ok experience.

I mainly chose to play this for the visuals. I really liked the Alice in Wonderland vibe in the vibrant voxel artstyle.

It's an extremely short game (3-4 hours) which really helps to look at it more favourably as the gameplay is extremely basic and uninteresting. I'd say this game would probably be best suited for young kids that are just learning ARPG and puzzle games. There's really not a lot going on a part from the visuals.

If you just want a short, casual game that's visually appealing and don't particularly care about the gameplay then this is an OK choice. You'll certainly love getting an achievement for absolutely everything you do in the game.

The concept of this is great. Each level being a mini-world, many of which are like little rubicks cubes that look small and simple of the surface but contain lots of hidden rooms and passages that you discover by manipulating world elements.

With over 70 levels broken up into 3 episodes and a bonus episode, it was surprising how many offered it's own unique gameplay with unique mechanics. They managed to keep the creativity going right till the end except for the bonus levels which were basically previous levels with a twist.

There's probably only 2 things I'd nitpick and that's no restart option (have to leave then re-enter the level to restart) and some levels built in a way that don't allow you to backtrack if you missed something.

I managed to complete all but the last 4 bonus levels, which required me to 100% the 3 episodes.

More of a barebones stardew in terms of lore/story, just simply focused on gathering resources, upgrading equipment/structures and exploring as well as some puzzles thrown in.

It's highly addictive, it ramps up quite quickly and gets fairly chaotic. Definitely not the calm approach of something like stardew where you're waiting to do stuff in different seasons or at different times in the day/night cycle.

There's not really an ending to this game but I mean once you've completed all npc tasks, all the puzzles, gotten all the seals, I'd call that done. You can play on just to keep upgrading weapons/tools, build even more structures and increase your resource gathering and building rate but I only find that fun when I've got something to work towards (like unlocking more lands or complete another task etc...). Once you've collected all the seals etc, nothing happens, and so I was kind of left disappointed when ending this game even though I thoroughly enjoyed playing it. Just something special to show that you've completed everything rather than just another reward would have been appreciated.

Even finishing the museum, you spend so long completing it and you get nothing special for doing it lol.

The game also has performance issues that need addressing. If you've got a high refresh rate monitor, make sure you cap your framerate to 60fps otherwise the framerate seems to tank into the 30s. For some reason it doesn't like that the framerate can go over 60fps. Once capped it will stay at a solid 60fps. However the bigger issue is the gradual slow down of this game as you play. By the end, I would see a black screen for a few seconds going in and out of menus. This is on a high end gaming pc.

My friend is experiencing this slow down just a few hours in on the Nintendo Switch, which means I doubt he may even be able to finish this game due to the poor performance.

Let's start with the good things:
The artstyle and atmosphere of this game is excellent (has a high production Tim Burton-esque vibe to it). The character designs were interesting and had loads of personality. The story was fairly generic but suitable and enjoyable. The game performed perfectly, no issues running this at full framerate. There were just a couple of minor bugs (e.g. a prompt staying in the corner of the screen) but were not at all game breaking. Everything aside from the gameplay was high quality.

Now the bad:
The gameplay however is really generic, uninspired and just flat-out annoying. I get that the focus of this game is the linear cinematic experience, but what they do to achieve that just doesn't make for fun gameplay. It is constantly interrupting your flow with cutscenes or disabling actions to get through dialog.

The combat itself is built around the idea of interrupting flow. The idea of constantly refreshing your moveset via a deck of cards is great on paper but it doesn't translate well in practice. You're constantly stopping to select from randomly drawn cards which just makes every instance of combat feel so drawn out and aggravating. The board game battles just added another layer of interruption on top of that lol. There's also just not that much variety. Thankfully it's extremely easy so it's not likely you're going to die and have to replay some areas.

They utilize a choice-based dialog mechanic when interacting with other characters but the choices don't matter. Seriously, don't do this, don't waste my time forcing me to choose responses if those choices don't matter. It's not fun, it just wastes the player's time. This, coupled with the combat system made me want to avoid interacting with characters when possible which meant avoiding any side quests.

Another time waster are these intermission sections between key sections of the game. All you do in them is walk forward for ages to trigger the next section of the game. If this wasn't mind-numbing enough, they have the nerve to slow your character down to a crawl.

It was such a shame given every other aspect of this game was so good. Unfortunately, you can't have a good game without good gameplay.

The humour felt too try-hard most of the time. Don't know if I've just grown tired of Justin Roiland's brand of humour, there was some amusing moments though. Definitely had to turn down gun and enemy chatter. The last gun was definitely a strong way to finish off the game, that got a laugh.

The combat was fun at least, especially combined with the jetpack and grappling. I didn't find most of the guns that useful in combat though, mainly just used the first gun.

The rest of the gameplay just annoyed me. Long unskippable banter (and just stupid stuff like you've been listening to gene rattle on for like 5 minutes and then it wants you to click on gene to talk to him again, why?, I'm already talking to him just make it tell me the next part, ugh), dialog choices that didn't matter and objectives that waste your time (like an objective where you literally have to wait). I get that's the joke sometimes, that it's horrible gameplay on purpose but I just didn't care for it.

Performance was passable albeit the framerate was inconsistent and even when it would be over 100fps and motion blur turned off it was still a blurry mess when moving around.

The saving grace is that it's very short at least.

If you're like me and prioritize gameplay over story, this game is definitely not for you. Even if you think "ok well since the story is so good, maybe I'll just put up with it", you're underestimating just how bad the gameplay is, the gameplay WILL break you. No story, no matter how great, is worth this. The gameplay in this is the antithesis of fun. It might be the worst game I've ever played. It has no respect for your time whatsoever. In fact it seems to go out of its way to be excruciatingly painful on purpose. And this is just the main story quests, after experiencing how god awful bad those quests are, I sure as hell didn't spend a second doing any side quests which I hear are just fetch quests anyway.

If anyone wants to defend it, I want you to sit through this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG46kAJ-DVA), all of this, no skipping. And then because you're having so much fun, I want you to sit through this again. This wasn't even at the start of this trailing mission and this only scratches the surface of just how outrageously timewastingly bad this gameplay is. If I tried listing all the moments of bad gameplay in this, I truly would be just listing the whole game.

Now I'm pretty stubborn, I painstakingly dragged myself through all of route A. The story is good, the soundtrack (for the most part) is amazing. I can not bring myself to replay any of it for the other routes. Better to just watch those endings on youtube. The main enemies, the shades, must be the worst character designs I've ever seen in a game. Just swirling masses of black and yellow. There's no personality to them, they're as boring as it gets both visually and behaviourally. Ain't no kid drawing a freaking shade.

I say all this when Automata is one of my all time favourite games, which is probably why I pushed so hard with this despite not enjoying it. Unfortunately the gameplay is so bad it broke me.

This is a great game for someone who wants intense bullet hell action without the daunting prospect of permadeath like in a roguelike thrown on top. It doesn't touch something like Enter the Gungeon in terms of difficulty, but it does offer a similar challenge in terms of dense bullet hell combat with the confidence that you're not going to lose much progress given there's always a save point close by. The only thing you lose when you die anyway is half the money you're holding but the save points double as teleporters that allow you to quickly teleport to a town and store your money so there isn't even really the fear of losing that, it all depends on how much you want to push your luck.

The environment and enemy variety was a big strength and is what kept me engaged right to the end and the decent amount of item variety encouraged me to explore every room.

I felt the progression was on point, I felt I was always challenged but not impossibly so, with your build dictating just how hard that challenge will be. There's also mini challenges in some rooms that are just dodging 3 rounds of attacks without getting hit. Some of these were brutal but worth doing in my opinion as not only do they give you badges (which give you passives) but hone your skills at dodging attacks. You'll definitely need every advantage you can get for the final boss in both skill and build.

Easily one of my favourites from this year. It's very relaxed and casual. No enemies or race against the clock. The entire emphasis is on exploration and the level design packs so much into small rooms with so much creativity that you'll want to explore every nook and cranny.

You're never really interrupted with lengthy dialog (unless you choose to interact with an npc) or the game explaining mechanics. It also doesn't waste your time, you can carry along multiple items to complete multiple subtasks at once, you're given a way to traverse faster right off the bat and the spider webs let you zip across the room so you never feel like backtracking or getting to a certain location is a chore.

The artwork is charming and crisp. The bugs you encounter in each room have a ton of personality. The controls felt perfect. I never once felt the game, a mechanic or controls were fighting against me.

This was a joy to play from start to finish.