Absolutely delightful "Myst but not bullshit" game using Naohisa Inoue's fantastical paintings as a source material. It's short, it's devoid of challenge, it controls exactly as clunky as you'd expect from a first-person Playstation game without analog controls. If you said it's not really even a game at all I don't know I'd have a compelling counterargument.

But I also had a smile on my face the entire goddamn time I played it. Sometimes you just gotta let the vibes take over and have a good ass time. You making friends with dinosaurs in whatever game you love? Didn't think so. And I'd publicly post my social security number on the internet for one of the megezo plushes they made for this game.

To be a little less jokey in tone for half a second: Iblard: Laputa no Kaeru Machi's overarching story of self-doubt as physical manifestations you must acknowledge but dismiss kind of bowled me over a little bit. We'll just say that it hits close to home and leave it at that. Maybe if that's not your default headspace the game won't resonate with you in the way it did me. I don't know.

If I had to give any points of reference for this game, think LSD Dream Emulator if it had structure. Or, of course, any of the other System Sacom games like Mansion of Hidden Souls, but instead of weird (dour) it's weird (whimsical).

This game rocks, it's an all-time favorite, I sincerely wish we existed in a world where more games made me feel the way I did playing through this one.

Could do without the full-screen flashing endemic to the game's main point of friction, however. Luckily you can manipulate the game enough for it to not happen too badly.