A collection of 9 bite-sized games the developers did for Game Jams and a tenth full game exclusive to this collection. All of them paired with a 10-15 minute video of the devs talking about each project. A really interesting piece of insight of the development process and the evolution of small development teams. The games themselves are kinda cool, specially the ones in which the devs explore the narrative options that are only possible in videogames as a medium, my favorite ones being 11.45 A Vivid Life and Eternal Home Floristry.
If you are somehow interested in small indie games, game development in general or narrative experiments, check this out. One of the most interesting pieces of not-only-game media of the videogame industry.

Let's get this out of the way, when there was a lot of darkness in the world at the start of the pandemic, this brought me a wonderful way to distract myself.

With that said, as much as I appreciate what the game accomplished at a meta-societal level, I'm not super in love with the way they upped some of the gamey systems here.

Crafting in particular stands out as a key example of a "gamey" system that was added to the AC formula without really understanding how to implement crafting. Which seems like a pretty classic Nintendo problem, taking a modern concept/mechanic and implementing it how I would expect it to have been done in 2013.

Not being able to craft multiple items at once, having to spam through repeat character dialogue, being unable to eat stacks of fruit instead of one by one, being unable to craft directly from storage...these are things that have been "solved" quality-of-life issues for years in most games. And honestly, on their own, none of these things are more than minor annoyances. But in concert with one another, these things add up quick.

And maybe I'm being unfair to Nintendo's technical prowess and they're not so backwards and they are aware that these QoL things exist elsewhere. Which actually leaves us with a funnier option: all of this is intentional! Presumably, if that's true, they think this stuff is part of the charm of the village experience.

No, I'm sorry, it's not charming to have to spam past Blathers dialog constantly (haha get it, he "blathers" on about stuff because it's his name, so clever!), it's not charming that the Twins won't let me buy larger multiples of items from the shop (like flowers). It's just irritating.

And all of this makes me feel like there's a great game here...but it's buried under some really annoying design decisions.