Such a weird game that defies expectations. I was relieved to learn early on that it's (mostly) a puzzle game. When it does introduce combat, it's often frustrating and generally detracts from its strengths as a puzzle game. I didn't mind the one mini-boss battle, though.

The art design is pretty incredible. Lots of sickeningly nightmarish imagery throughout. The narrative and levels are a bit too abstruse for my tastes, unfortunately. I did find myself walking down dead-end paths, walking in circles, and dying during combat enough that I nearly put it down. I'm definitely glad I finished, but I was relieved when I realized I was done. Maybe after enough time, I can revisit it and have a smoother experience.

Correction: I originally misused "recency bias" below. It has been corrected to "the serial position effect".
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Like the first game, this has so much potential but doesn't quite fulfill its promise. I suspect that the overwhelmingly favorable response to this is due to the serial position effect. The opening is enticing, and the last 45-60 minutes are thrilling. If I were grading on creepy imagery, especially character design, this is an A+. The score is also perfectly unsettling. It's the rest that falls short. The gameplay is a mix of frequent platforming, occasional stealth, and rare action sequences. Sadly, too many are rote and rudimentary. Don't expect a challenge.

The two main protagonists are essentially faceless on purpose, but some more characterization could've helped me care about them. LN2 seemingly isn't meant to convey much of a story, just an eerie feeling, which admittedly it does extremely well.

I was rooting for this and really wanted to love it, but I generally wouldn't recommend it. Not a DNF but a barely finished.

I so wanted to find something great to enjoy here. But the shooting is pretty dull, the traversal mechanics aren't consistently interesting, and most of the jokes don't land. The potential here is pretty huge: voiceover from a laundry list of funny comedians , Tobacco's score, and Roiland's unique absurdity. Sadly, this is another illustration of the difficulty of making comedy games.

It does have one of the best achievement jokes I've seen, but you'd have to get about 90% of the way through the game to see it.

A fun dungeon-crawler that unfortunately wears out its welcome before the end. The combat mechanics are solid, and I enjoyed playing around with the forms I unlocked. It will likely test your tolerance for grinding, if you want to see it to the end. There are several mini-challenges to unlock for each form, e.g., killing an enemy with a specific ability, and these give you stars that you'll need to unlock the larger main dungeons, which you'll have to complete to get to the final encounter. Some of these challenges you'll do naturally, but others require consistent form-changing and ability-reworking to make sure you're always making progress in those challenges. Unfortunately, this made the last 5+ hours of a ~20 hours game feel like a chore; I had finished all but one mini-dungeon, and I felt well-equipped with the forms I enjoyed playing, but I had to keep grinding out those challenges to get more stars.

Drinkbox's fun, colorful art style is great, and Jim Guthrie's score is solid. I appreciate their ambition, and there's a lot to like, but I think it could've been stronger had they shown some restraint with NSTW.

A really great tiny indie that I'm glad got a sequel that I hope to play soon. Playing in handheld mode on the Switch isn't ideal; a good bit of visual detail gets lost. I'm strongly considering re-playing on PC to give its visuals another look.

I wish some of the controls were tighter. Moving and jumping are a bit awkward, making it easy to knock around fuel tanks inside the ship or accidentally hit buttons I didn't mean to hit. I was hoping for a little more challenge in the vehicle mechanics, but they're still engaging and not over-simplified.

This has some of the quiet charm of other side-scroller puzzle-platform indies like Limbo or Inside, but it certainly has its own appeal.

I forgot to review this when I finished it several months ago, but it's maintained its shine in my memory since. One of the great puzzle games from last decade, with just the right amount of abstract weirdness and outside-the-box thinking required, which could've been infuriating instead of fascinating. I played through on a PC, but I remember it playing just as well on an iPad the first time I tinkered with it without finishing it. So, so close to being a 5-star game for me, though I can't put my finger on what it's missing.

A beautiful, dreamy interactive memoir that's worth the hour it takes to complete but whose toybox-like interactivity is frequently uninteresting. The gameplay falls back to "click on everything to move on" a bit too often for me. I did love the original songs, and the soundtrack is good overall. I like the mix of visual styles and how the hand-drawn scenes denote memories from the protagonist's childhood. I don't think I would've wanted another hour, even if the story, which is sweet and moving, were further fleshed out.

One of my favorites this year. I love the look: cute but not twee. The click-and-drag interface generally works well. Dragging a scenario to a box and then dragging characters, usually 1-3 per box, is intuitive. I did frequently drag a character mistakenly when trying to drag the entire box off screen to clear it. Ultimately, putting together little scenes to create a larger but still not overly complex story is really satisfying.

I really love the way the game opens up after completing the last chapter. I wish there had been more devil chapters, but I was excited to have more to do after the main game. I also got unexpectedly obsessed with getting all of the stamps. Unfortunately, the clumsy way of scrolling through chapters is cumbersome enough that I felt punished for wanting to revisit chapters to complete all challenges and stamps. Maybe this a drawback of playing on a touchscreen (I played on a phone). Still, this was one of those rare games that I couldn't help but devour over just a few days, despite a few flaws with the touch interface on a small screen. It made my infrequently used NF subscription more worthwhile than any show or movie recently.

I'm happy for any Pikmin I can get, so I'm grateful we're still getting mainline Pikmin games, even if they're ~10 years apart. This has most of the Pikmin stuff I love, but the changes--namely the reworking of multi-character management that was so fun in Pikmin 3--aren't so welcome. You get some of that multitasking when giving your character and Oatchi different taks, but it feels dumbed down from the previous game. Adding gear and currency just add a false sense of complexity without meaningfully changing how you play the game. The night missions aren't ever something I looked forward to.

I played this a lot and enjoyed much of it, but it did make me hope for a better Pikmin 5, hopefully this decade.