initially i liked this, but after thinking about it more it's just self-indulgent melancholy porn whining about... people trying to interpret the intentions behind the creation of art? sure, projection is a thing, that doesn't mean it's a thing in every case of trying to divine someone else's intentions ever. lmfao people will eat up anything if it has the superficial appearance of being deep through abstractness, unconventionality, and being "postmodern" (lmfao) i guess. this game is pretentious, unsubtle garbage. and no it's not because it's a walking sim. The Stanley Parable was made by the same person and is good (if similarly unsubtle, though it works to its benefit there), as is What Remains of Edith Finch and Paratopic and probably plenty of other walking sims. play like, Yume Nikki if you want a weird exploration game/walking sim that isn't as self-indulgent.

between the hilariously high input delay, joycon drift, all the characters being nearly identical, the game’s movement and system mechanics being designed for “casual” play making it have an awful game feel (surprise surprise, removing player agency for “casuals” and adding a bunch more endlag for no reason just makes the game less fun for everyone), and probably several other things, this is probably one of the least fun party games i’ve ever played.

it also sucks as a competitive game/sport, but post-Melee smash is just so dull in that department it's barely worth mentioning. 64 and Melee were just accidentally good.

old "tactical" fps-inspired speed game (5 stars) disguising itself as--wearing the rotten skin of--a lame BITING absurdist-melancholic anti-capitalist satire only redeemed by its comedic flair (3 stars maximum). ultimately very gay; im sure the Themes of this game are novel to many but to me it's just grating and tiring to hear about how crapitalism bad (however sophisticated the way it is said; however idiosyncratic its influences) for the gorbillionth time. all the ground tread here was already tread better by swift, verhoeven et al. too mechanically engaging and atmospherically interesting to not give 5 stars but i will likely [love-]hate this game even more if it becomes anything close to a trendsetter for indies, especially since they're almost certainly going to be less funny and less intelligent. i'm just not very interested in your trite politics, sorry!

ends rather abruptly as these single-dev art games tend to. though in fairness I probably missed a lot. very good atmosphere. could never tell how much my progress was being the first to find a relic or robbing another party that had already taken it. a puzzlebox of a game with several other parties trying to solve it. oh you also start the game with estradiol lmfao.

a few miscellaneous notes:
-i know it's apart of the aesthetic but I would've preferred viewmodels that aren't just Source game screenshots or whatever the fuck they are

-only having 2 rotational sprites is annoying but i guess it's also apart of the aesthetic. game would probably lose some of its creep factor if there were more, idk.

-the short playtime is likely justified by how genuinely replayable it is due to how much you miss by virtue of there being agents which do what you're doing when you aren't looking

-it's utterly shocking that this is probably the first game i have played where (some) NPCs actually have game-mechanical agency analogous to the player, with the possible exception of some traditional roguelikes. and it's still incredibly rudimentary as far as I can tell. that's honestly kind of embarrassing for the medium; who wants power fantasies anymore? did anyone actually want them to begin with? how does having a Great Man player character with NPCs that are husks make for a good "RP"G? we need more games where Herobrine is real.

Playing this game with enough experience is like operating a software you've been using for a decade. The smoothest UX of any roguelike, period, and possibly of any game ever: o, tab, ctrl+f, ctrl+g, macros, etc. The least turn-based turn-based game there is. Digital crack. Has a design philosophy which amounts to the video game equivalent of removing chess openings (and the requisite need to study them) -- it is left as an exercise to the reader to determine whether or not that is a good or bad thing.

one of the best multiplayer pvp games.

miscellaneous notes:

- the first and only multiplayer pvp game to incorporate building and destruction in a way that feels natural (that is, does not come off as a gimmick) and actually matters.

- extremely simple mechanics with extremely high skill ceilings -- archer is not worse than knight, but they are certainly harder. high-level builder requires absurd and excessive skill.

- incredibly dynamic matches with territorial ebb and flow and war-infrastructure construction and demolition that is reminiscent of real warfare but sped up.

- i would say there's a potential gamemode better than CTF, but CTF is in many ways perfect for this game.

- there could probably be another class. it feels like some niche is missing its fulfillment, some piece of the puzzle is absent, but i'm not sure what. maybe this is just the maximalist part of me talking, and if i had my way there would be minimum 9 classes.

resident evil is a part of a surprisingly and increasingly marginal tradition of games that realize the intrinsic degeneracy of unlimited saves, especially quicksaves, or at least realize that saving is relevant to how one plays. thus, there are ink ribbons: a scarce resource one must expend to save their game. suddenly saving is an economic decision rather than a mindless amenity one is probably taking advantage of nigh-constantly, trivializing much of the game and removing any tension. now one is incentivized to go up to an hour or two without saving, meaning one is thinking a lot more about their actions -- and is a lot more stressed, perhaps even horrified, by potential failure.

infamously brutal in the first hour or so but unless one is filtered they quickly adapt. that brutality is, in no small part, because of how awkward and unintuitive the combat is. a part of that is the despised-by-many tank controls of course, but those are quick to learn even if there's some lingering unwieldiness that never goes away. elsewise, camera angels are often not in your favor, and even when they are it can be hard to tell if you're actually aiming at what you're trying to. combine that with scarce ammunition, healing items, and saving as aforementioned, and combat becomes both very deliberate and, when things go wrong, a desperate scramble to both avoid death and save resources, when you decide to engage in it at all. some of the threat is eventually undercut by the sheer abundance of ammunition and especially healing items later on, but it never fully goes away.

when you aren't killing dudes, you'll be exploring and navigating, and you'll be doing a lot of it. it is generally pretty difficult to make mere traversal all that interesting, but here it is pretty enjoyable. the looming threat of combat and therefore potentially death being around the corner is ever-present, and even absent any threat the world is very tightly designed. every room feels very distinct and identifiable -- to the point where, even though one is provided, you barely ever need to use your map. puzzles and similar challenges are interspersed, making it just complex enough that often enough you are not merely going from point A to point B but instead thinking a little more about what you're doing.

dialogue writing? voice acting? what do you mean? i have no idea what you are talking about.