A dramatically expanded sequel that marks something of a departure from its predecessor. Where the first game consisted almost entirely of magnetic attraction/repulsion platforming puzzles in pretty self-contained levels joined to a central tower, Teslagrad 2 makes one of its polarities an entirely optional ability, and instead adds other abilities to your arsenal that make the game more about momentum-based traversal through large, open environments. Having played Teslagrad Remastered and Teslagrad 2 back to back, I like them both but definitely prefer this one; the greater degree of freedom is much appreciated, and blazing across the map once you have the full toolkit at your disposal is incredibly fun. (I really need to look up some speedruns, I bet people have accomplished some crazy stuff with the moveset.) Still not a big fan of the boss fights in this one, but you can't win 'em all.

A puzzle-platformer that answers the question “What if Inside had bright colors and a little pet that follows you around?” It’s cute enough and quite pretty, but honestly I wasn’t super engaged for most of my playtime; the puzzles were mostly just a lot of pushing boxes and waiting for patrolling enemies to turn around and trying to remember which buttons I needed to hit to make my alien companion stand in the right spot, and and the pretty landscapes mostly kinda blended together. It did start to win me over eventually though, first with a really gorgeous scene of a night sky and sunrise, and then with some really cool aesthetic shifts and fun setpieces towards the end, and I was pleasantly surprised by the use of stillness in a climactic scene. There’s nothing nearly as wild or surprising as Inside’s ending, but I came away from the game liking it more than I was expecting.

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.