Look, it's a good setting, and it's good sci-fi, but I can't shake the feeling that I paid $25 for this game to call me an idiot over and over again. Is the time loop really necessary? Do I really need an excruciating flashback of my slow and oncoming death because the sun kidnapped my ship while I was trying to find the exact place to stand on a travelling meteor? Do I need the creeping time pressure of a collapsing planet as I try to figure out the exact non-Euclidian route I need to take to get inside a tower that maybe has the next breadcrumb that might maybe make me feel like I've made progress?

Again, the setting is good. Each planet is different. It does fun things with gravity and perspective and it's genuinely creative. I just wish I was playing a walking simulator sometimes, because I'm old, and I get frustrated when I know that jellyfish are electrically resistant and this surface is electric but I can't figure out the exact sequence of steps I need to take in order to combine those two facts before the sun explodes and I get to watch a playback of my jerk avatar failing to solve a puzzle for 15 seconds over mournful music.

My primary emotions are embarrassment, anger and exhaustion instead of wonder and awe.

extremely great sense of momentum, great sound design, maybe a little hard to decode visually but that's only a problem in the "Liberation" stages where you are playing towards a specific objective beyond "move right".
it actually does manage to tell a story pretty well, although by the time you are chasing a helicopter through the trees it veers towards comic heavy-handedness. The heavy-handedness is in service of a good message that is well-enforced by the mechanics - the trees feel so good to swing through, and the deforestation is bleak and alien, and the cities are baffling and confusing but not impossible. You can feel how gibbons live best in their natural environment, and they can adapt, and people can adapt, but adaptation is difficult.
i finished the story and immediately wanted to keep playing. the liberation mode isn't as well tuned. that's fine. it's actually nice to be able to stop playing a game after a few hours.

you wouldn't think pinball and platforming would mix but yoku makes it work. sure there are going to be times you miss a shot and need to try ten or twenty times but that's pinball baby!!!! and its not dissimilar to missing a jump in a platformer and needing to clamber back up.

great soundtrack, fun writing.

some of the collectibles are a little fussy but they're entirely optional. i would rush to buy a sequel on day 1

I think it's got the bones of horror down - the puke-tinge of sky, the slow tension of a decrepit elevator descending and not being quite sure what's inside, the understandable unease of someone silently walking inside your apartment. i even appreciate it pulled the sudden jump cuts from gravity bone / 30 flights of loving. i just think it needed a slightly stronger editing hand, especially in the car scenes (and i mean, i get it - it was a late-night art bell call in show, but also: damn, it went on a long time).

also, i'm not entirely sure i understood what happened, plot-wise.