I got a free code for this game from the dev!

Nice little puzzley dungeon crawler. The game has a good variety of enemies and items that are fairly easy to keep track of, however when they start getting numerous it can become a bit chaotic. Most of the levels are pretty well tuned though, so there is always a method to the madness.

The game was limited by the room size always being the same, so the levels kind of blur together without too much uniqueness beyond enemy variety. Also, while I'm not sure 5 additional costumes was necessary for a game with 6 worlds, it was fun, so can't complain!

90% atmosphere, 10% gameplay

Stunning visuals, great music, interesting dialogue, confusing plot, kinda bad platforming, poor level design

Unfortunately, I also found the core puzzle gameplay to be a little samey and easy, although it suddenly picked up a bit and got very interesting towards the end, though was very under-explored. Same with the platforming! Some of the best stuff is in the last 15 mins or so of gameplay, which sucks!

Nothing too unusual for an Analgesic game, but games like this, with nontraditional characters and unorthodox game design choices, can't be found anywhere else, so I'm glad it exists.

First and foremost:

If you want to play this game without any external help (like I did), you can totally do it. Don't let other people tell you this game is ridiculously obtuse, it's really not. However, the English translation omitted a single line that does make one part basically impossible without lots of random guessing. I promise it won't spoil the experience, but in case you don't want to see it, I advise you stop reading here.

The one thing the English translation omits that makes an unguided playthrough extremely annoying is "Dempou Soccer". That's it. More specifically, a computer should say "Dempou Soccer" on its screen. That's enough for you to complete the game now. Have fun.

By the way, if you play on emulator, I recommend allowing yourself to use savestates BUT ONLY after first experiencing the game for a few hours. Abusing them will diminish the experience, but some bits of this game are easy to fail and agonizingly slow to return to to try again.

I think the devs must have known how brutal each mis-step could be, and if one chose to avoid the consequences of a mis-step by save-scumming, how meticulously boring and tedious it would be to head to a save location, save, quit, and reload the game. On the GAME OVER screen, your twitching, heartbroken body routinely gets kicked by one of the teachers, followed by them walking away and leaving you there in the dust. It's a pretty accurate summary of how this game treats the player at times.

However, Chulip is a genuinely wonderful game. Like Backseat Gamer said in his analysis video of the game, Chulip is (probably accidentally) a great detective game. And unlike most of the most popular detective games, there is so much information to learn that won't help you progress, but will enrich your experience. The characters become more than NPCs, they become more like people, with their own lives and own problems and own passions. And you will want to understand them and you will want to help them and it's easier to forgive them for the way they act towards you at first.

One-year-later addendum:

Chulip embodies the Shabby Life. The rough life. Living with what money you got, if you got any. Getting by how you can. And looking at love as a way to escape it all. A fascinatingly unique game, that many imitators have attempted to emulate but haven't quite hit the mark yet (as far as I'm aware!).

A strange one. I love these early games that try to figure out how to play with a new medium (PS1/3D graphics) and sometimes stumble into brilliance and sometimes completely miss the mark. You get a good amount of both with Tomba, but the things they got right are more memorable than what they got wrong.

The event system is odd by today's standards but honestly I wonder why it never caught on. I was always happy to see another event message pop up and completing another event for the list was just as satisfying. Sometimes the event names/descriptions really hung you up to dry, and without using a guide it can be frustrating to run into the right NPC or small room to progress the game.

I really liked this game despite it's flaws and am looking forwards to playing the sequel;

The Dungeon Rules is a genre-mash of sokoban, roguelike, and dungeon crawler, which as a fan of some of those things, is pretty wild! I was surprised that this could work. The combat gameplay is vaguely reminiscent of Slay the Spire, while not holding up to that masterpiece, it is still serviceable and encourages you to put some thought into your card playing. The sokoban aspects are also serviceable, however, and this is a big however, there is a lot of potential for softlocks. Because there is no undo button, every move is final, which is typical for a roguelike, but frustrating for a sokoban. On the very first level, I got a box trapped in a corner after already clearing out most of the dungeon, and was forced to simply restart the entire level, which is discouraging at the least. Besides that, there are cards you can use outside of the combat that are one-time use and at first seem like optional goodies to help you get through some tougher puzzles/dungeons. But instead, they are mandatory for solving certain puzzles which you won't know until it's too late.

This game is currently a bit too rough around the edges for me to recommend. But I hope the developer keeps trying as there are some good ideas here.

(I received a review code for free from the dev)

Grapple Dog is polished to a sparkle. It's really a blast to play, it just instantly feels fun, and the level design is effortlessly intuitive. The pixel art is SO CLEAN too, it's kind of mesmerizing.

My biggest issues with the game lay with the gameplay itself. I've seen some other comments mentioning the motion feeling off somehow, but honestly I got used to it as the game went, although specifically when Pablo is in his rolled-up ball animation, he really does tend to fly around at the touch of a button and becomes way too hard to control precisely, which is sometimes required. My bigger issue was with the grappling hook, which unfortunately is kind of the core of the game.

The grappling hook has three angles: up, up-left, and up-right. I don't think this ever felt right. It forces you to make shots at weird angles when you'd rather just tilt it a bit more this way or that way. This is one of those things that's not really meaningful to someone who hasn't played the game, so I'll leave it at that.

One other major game design issue that I'm still confused about: checkpoints don't work like they do in... every other game. And by that I mean, if you touch a checkpoint, it doesn't save your progress, and it doesn't heal you. It only works once. This sounds like a little nitpick, but it seriously messed with my playthrough several times in ways that made me restart a level when I was 80% done with it. This is because if you hit a checkpoint, then go back and collect some gems or fruits, if you die before hitting another checkpoint, you have to redo it all. Even worse, the level might block you from going back after you die because certain gates will reset. It's also just frustrating to lose health right next to a checkpoint and instead of being able to quickly touch it and get going once again, I would often just die on purpose or open the menu to restart at the checkpoint, which just felt so unnecessary. Very odd choice that I saw no benefit from.

Other than some gameplay flaws, it's a really, really solid platformer that is so easy to get into and hardly needs any carrots-on-sticks to get you playing more.