A playfully antagonistic exploration platformer that isn’t afraid to very intentionally add friction to the player’s experience. The movement is difficult to get the hang of (lots of inertia and it’s impossible to hug walls because you rebound off of them), there are false walls and floors aplenty (made more difficult to find by the fact that you can’t hug walls), there are secret passages that are only revealed by using one of your items at the entrance, there’s no detailed map so you have to just try to remember where everything is, you generally aren’t given any direction on where you should go, and the only checkpoints you get are the ones you remember to place yourself (and by “place” I mean “throw repeatedly until you figure out how to get it to not bounce into spikes”).

To be clear, none of these are complaints; Sylvie Lime is occasionally frustrating but those quirks are what make it so interesting and rewarding. It’s a game that wants to be in conversation with the player, wants you to think about what it’s doing and why, wants to tell you about what it’s doing and why. I was reminded a bit of Anodyne 2, another excellent game that directly addresses the player at certain points to talk about its own design.