I played like 60 hours of this game over about 10 days, including staying up until 2am FAR more nights in a row than I should be doing at my age. The game has ZERO tutorial. You're just dropped in and the first time I tried to play I literally gave up after 5 minutes because I couldn't figure out how to do the very first action to unlock any of the areas. But after I looked it up and stumbled around a bit, I ended up realizing there's not really such a thing as a "spoiler" where this game is concerned. It's all just more information and 90% of the things you can read on the wiki are TECHNICALLY contained in the game, just in such a way that it's almost impossible to process or remember. Anyway, 60 hours and COUNTLESS wiki pages later, I've compared the gameplay to several things. The necessity (and in some cases kind of delightful density) of metacontent from the wiki is very similar to Stardew Valley. The way I can sort of enjoyably spend hours just rearranging furniture and items is almost like the Sims, only there's no rouge sims running around setting fires trying to cook. And the gameplay itself, the actual crafting and unlocking and leveling up, is an almost endlessly complex puzzle that I imagine to be halfway between Myst and Civ (I've not technically played either of them but have watched gameplay).
That said... at about midnight last night, 65 hours into the game with So Many wiki pages open, it suddenly struck me that the mechanic specifically for leveling up your action cards (9 components that make up a soul) is still SO CRUELLY COMPLICATED that the handful of times I managed to do it so far has been with more than a bit of luck and prayer.
TLDR: It's a Benoit Blanc situation. Doesn't make sense. Compels me tho. Maybe it will compel you too.

INCREDIBLY sweet and hilarious. Plus I need more games that only take like 45 minutes because boy what a delight it is to sit down with a friend and play an entire game in one sitting and then be excited but not stressed about when we'll get to the next installment.

I played this on mobile first and then when I found myself staring at my tiny phone screen for three hours and my eyes got all blurry I was like 'probably I should get this on my computer' and JUST THEN there was a sale. So I've been playing on there ever since. Enjoyable loop, lots to unlock, achievements are mostly pretty manageable and I have a lot of fun. ONLY complaint is that the core loop takes a bit too long in the sense that I can't easily pick it up and play it every day without risking losing 2-4 hours to a video game. If there was some easier way to mentally delineate between one island and the next so I could theoretically stop myself from playing them one after another that would be incredibly helpful.

Playing it "derro co-op" with a friend over discord, the same way I was introduced to it. Something very special about the first act being a group project between one person who knows more and one person who is completely new.

Edit: Stopped after Act 1, that style shift is really hard to swallow if someone isn't interested in learning the new mechanics in Act 2

The mechanics of this came are too difficult for my tiny little brain, I accidentally killed one of the first bosses (even though I knew about the concept of a mercy route) and was so devastated that I can never go back. I know the creator though because he's an alumni of the HS (homestuck) I went to