i wanted a relaxing game that wasn't totally thoughtless, and this game mostly filled that need.

but: i gotta say after finishing almost the entire thing, it's a little wacky in practice. i found it hard to read the seed in my hands (especially wheat vs ferns - both are kind of tan, i guess? - or pothos vs monster - both are green???). it's hard to tell when you start a stage the exact moves you need to make to clear it, especially since your upcoming items are hidden. and more than once i got to the end of a stage, ran out of items, sighed and busted out a water cloud for a few minutes to get to 100% because the clear conditions are just not easy to figure out. i'm almost done with the game and i'm still not super confident what it takes. also the music is wholly uninspiring, i was really hoping for chill beats to etc etc etc instead of generic synths.

on the one hand, i basically finished the game, all of this stuff is mostly optional because there's an "unlock everything" button, and there's a creative mode. i didn't suffer any penalties for restarting (besides some kind of drawn out animation times for transitions and seed recharges). i honestly did make some pretty landscapes and chilled out.

on the other hand, this stuff is part of the game, and the majority of what you actually do if you don't engage with it as a pure toybox. it intruded on my chill game vibes. my recommendation is not without its criticisms

It's neat having a kingdom sim running while you are out doing quests because it gives a little extra incentive. It's nice the kingdom building gives rewards to combat. But, the kingdom sim thrives on hiding information behind expensive and unbalanced upgrades. The higglies seem useless. It's hard to keep the item tiers in your head. And the plot is pretty standard (thank god for that skip button!)

I played it purely because I like the blend of kingdom sim + jRPG, and I enjoyed doing quests to recruit new people to my town. If that's not your genre jam-re, you probably won't get far.

yes mega man battle network had an extremely dope combat system. it also had a plot, and interplay between the physical world and the cyberworld, and neat little things like packing special abilities into a grid, and cameos from characters we still find reasons to care about somehow.

this is a by-the-numbers roguelike with an admittedly dope battle system that unfortunately invites comparisons to a greater game. choose your route on a map. hyper-optimize your deck. weigh every choice like it's the last one you're going to make. repeat x1000 to learn a boss pattern.

it was neat seeing some of the bosses join me after fighting them, but gosh, once again: nothing like pulling out a GUTSMAN card!

sorry bud! i was rooting for you! i just can't stand the roguelike run structure!

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.

i mean you're not gonna get me to sit down to pyramid song and have me say I had a bad time, but... i'm just not really sure what's in it unless you are a mega die-hard fan. there's some new intros and outros in the songs. there's some neat poster art.

there's like some degree of interplay between your movement and the music, but i honestly expected more from radiohead? I imagine them as very cutting edge and while this wasn't like a straightforward a-to-b experience - there is nice vibes in the art, there's some legitimately interesting stuff in the geometry and design - it was pretty much "Stand here, hear a song, or maybe just the drum track of a song". And again: it's a great album! just the drum track isolated is interesting and good! but god it feels like a waste of possibilities to get "stand on this poster to hear a different sound". rhythm games do more with getting you into the music and walking sims do more with getting you into the environment.

i think if you haven't listened to the album you will get the ~vibes~ from this game, but honestly just listen to the album? it stands on its own, and associating it with this weird art game will probably be kind of confusing or make you think the album is more inaccessible than it is. and if you're a huge fan of the album you will get a kick out of hearing it slightly recontextualized. but i've honestly played better album-games than this, and i'm really disappointed i have to say that

god, i wish i could finish this game. it seems like the dream! an urban exploration game about crumbling infrastructure tinged with conspiracy or maybe just urban politics and threaded with some light puzzling.

well, the puzzles weren't so light. i hit the PIPE ROOM and realized that, like, .... oh. this is one of those serious Logic Puzzle games, not one of those "pull this lever, haha you did it, good job" puzzle games. which is too bad, because as we have well established in Potato Lore by now i am tired and impatient all of the time.

i had this wishlisted for literally years because the pitch - turn based city builder + RPG + crafting + card game - just sounded so weird and genre-bendy that I couldn't justify ignoring it.

well, i should have ignored it. it's like King's Cross or Might and Magic (4x rpg). The combat is unique but that doesn't mean it's interesting - my hand was so limited that my choices felt constrained and I felt better running autoresolve than trying my luck. The crafting is.... opaque, and for that matter so is the rest of the interface.

yeah it has a weird draw to it. i went back to it for another 2 hours before getting re-stuck again. i wish i liked it more, but the interface is janky (no queuing movement, equipping is a pain, encumberance warnings are incredibly easy to miss, there's no "you forgot to move this unit" warning) . I kind of liked the writing despite myself but really I was thinking of just booting up Endless Legengs again. whoops.

Ok, on the one hand, I enjoyed myself. This comes from an older cloth of "let's throw in an optional skiing game... now a pirate song... alright, time management sim!", and you get a fun variety.

On the other hand, and maybe this is my fault for playing it back to back with Chicory, there's a pretty straightforward vibe of "I want to be the hero and I'm not". And it's warm and fuzzy and not meanspirited, which through one lens is refreshing, and through another lens (having just played Chicory), is a second teaspoon of pure sugar.

the musical nature of it is very forgiving, the platforming came right up against the edge of my very low skill bar but didn't push me too hard, and that's a neat challenge. the unlockable dances were hilarious. and the composed songs were great. However, the actual act of singing was.... not always the most pleasant thing to hear.

i finished this game a few days ago and I'm just reflecting on what it left me with. The answer isn't a lot, but it also isn't negative. So, you know.