Recent reviews by Unlearning

The Weavers Strike Back when?

Let me start out by stating, that when I hear the word "Masterpiece" being thrown around, my first instinct is to real back with skepticism. After playing this game for almost 80 hours, I can say that this game is not perfect...But it is, however, as close to perfect as any human can reasonably expect, and it truly does deserve the title of being a masterpiece.

Even if we set aside the game mechanics and visual world building, the story alone is worthy of an actual 'Oscar', or anything on par with a Fields Medal or Nobel, for story telling achievement. I don't know if Jennifer or Guillaume set out with the intention of creating a story with so many fundamentally deep undertones and layers, but by god, this really is a once in a lifetime work of art. How these two accomplished this on their first outing really is... I don't have the words, it might be an actual miracle. I will instantly buy anything Jennifer writes in the future. I honestly can't remember ever being so invested in a story or characters, even outside of gaming. 11/10

I might be an abnormally emotional guy, but even 2 months after finishing the game, I still can't hear a track from the OST without coming to tears. You actually feel the heart and talent poured into every track. I really can't even expound on it any more than /chefskiss. Actual gold.

The art direction and environmental detail is also top-notch. It's just plainly gorgeous from beginning to end. Expertly sets the tone for the previous 2 mentioned points. The world feels real, regardless of a fantasy setting. It could almost make me believe Eldritch entities actually exist. I personally feel that the world map itself, is a masterpiece of it's own. It took everything in a genre like jRPG and left out anything that was unneeded or annoying friction, and kept everything that made it beautiful, engaging, and immersive.

The English Voice Actors, and especially the Mocap Actors, are all absolutely insane. Lifetime achievement performances. The acting and the story, complete and utter immersion.

• Some of the UI can be frustrating. You end up with 100 different Pictos/Luminas in the end-game, with no way to filter or search them for Keywords. If you get an idea for builds, randomly while playing, it makes it a huge drag to have to search through everything to respec your team.
  
• The highlighting of selection in the menu's feels intuitively backwards. When something is highlighted for selection, it turns black, not lighter, and the mauve-esque dried blood red for an element already selected, is reminiscent of an 'Error', not something you turned 'on'.
  
• Some of the early level designs feels way too linear. This is something very difficult for a 3d game to begin with, and by end-game, almost all the layouts are somewhat interesting enough to make this point moot.
  
• Some of the wind-up animations can be infuriating. Luckily enough, the sound design is still top-notch here, and easily carries the load.
  
• I feel the mechanical RPG systems of stats and 'equipment' have an incredibly powerful base, but some of it felt like it just needed a few more iterations to feel completely fleshed out. The mechanics dev, Michel, said he was inspired by DotA2 and Path of Exile, but there is a reason PoE needs seasons and constant releases, they require literal tons of iteration to feel completely fleshed out. I honestly can't wait to play the next game Michel designs. Wait, was this a con?

It's free. It's cute. Worth the hour.

I've played this game all the way through, almost four separate times, and it's *still* very fun.

This is, by far, my favorite minesweeper-esque logic game. The puzzles are very engaging, and not at all overly complex. As soon as you reach a 'dead end' and spend an hour looking over a puzzle, you'll stumble across some basic logical deduction that you simply over-looked. The "Ah ha!"" moment, abounds.

Controls, app, and QoL are all simple yet perfectly functional.

10/10

Please make more!

What an absolute gem.

This is a puzzle game, disguised as a platformer/metroidvania.

The puzzles have puzzles. Traditional combat doesn't exist, and all the better for it.

Front to back could probably clear the 'initial' game in 10~hours. I spent an additional 38 hours combing over every room in the game, coming back days later after having a random thought "But what about this?". Words can't describe how great this is. If you enjoyed games like TUNIC or FEZ, this is an absolute no brainer.

Don't read a guide, figure it out as you go, you'll be way happier in the end.

TLDR: The next Billy Basso game can't come soon enough. Puzzles have Puzzles, that have Puzzles...that have Puzzles. 9/10

Short and Sweet Puzzler. Was pleasantly surprised, all things considered.

Pros-
Movement and Control feels tight.
Puzzles are relatively interesting but not too difficult.
Cool little Sprinkling of secrets and Meta-Puzzles.
What you see is what you get.

Cons-
Despite the tight response to controls, there are some random floaty aspects and edges of platforms can sometimes throw you into space.
Some of the sound puzzles have very bad audio balance, although are still completable. I could also just be hearing-impaired.
Brightness balance/contrast is a little overboard, some zones are pitch black.
Just one or two puzzles that make you wait around doing nothing for longer than 15-30 seconds, ala Witness. Devs need to stop doing this, it's disrespectful.


TLDR: I wasn't expecting much, seeing as though most 1st person puzzlers in the $2.00 range don't end up amounting to anything interesting or give you any value for your time, but this FAR exceeded my expectations, albiet a 5~ hour game. 100% recommend for Puzzler fans. 6.5/10

1 hour game.
I liked it.

Once you reach 15 mins in and try to craft your first item, you'll realize they put less effort and time into UX and UI design than they spent on the Logo of the game.

It's a crafting survival game, and it has 'snapping' that is less consistent than the weather on any given day. I take that back, it's actually consistent in that it just doesn't work 97% of the time, why does it even exist in the game?

There are hundreds of other survival crafting games that do what this advertises 100 times better. Don't waste your time.

Actual Garbage. I had fun for the first 20~ Hours.

Game looks phenomenal. The idea's behind are incredibly interesting, combining many elements into a great whole.

However current balance, QoL, UE, Hitboxes, and a plethora of design choices are all absolute Trash.

The UI is broken in 100 different ways that make it an incredibly frustrating and un-fun experience.

Design choices forcing you to farm for upgrades for hours, then time-gating you on those upgrades being available for 4 Hours. Yes, 4 IRL hours???

A choice to revolve a lot of the exploration game-play around platforming with a control system and hit-boxes that have more jank thank Marrowind. Be prepared to roll, dodge, and walk off cliffs while 3 character models away from an edge, for hours on end.

Enemies in the endgame that 2-shot you, that are Melee, also cast spells that track you and cover 3-4 screens. Yes perfect tracking, undodgeable, and cover 4 SCREENS.

Shield Enemies that literally block and stun you for 1.5 seconds, INSIDE their attack animations.

Locking you into character animations with no animation canceling, that only happens while in combat. If I press attack 3 times out of combat, it does 2 attacks, because of timing. In combat it will lock you into animations for 4 attacks with no canceling. In a game where enemies 2 shot you.

Absolute abhorrent input eating. The amount of times I've pressed a button and my character stood there and did nothing is baffling.

Some of the worst hit-boxes I've ever seen in a game. Being hit from a melee attack literally 2 screens away. Having enemies attacks go directly through my weapons parry animations.

Enemies that will instant stun you and somehow a vacuum comes in and sucks you off a cliff. While those same enemies have charge attacks that last 1-2 entire screens and never run off the cliffs themselves.

These same enemies will 180-270 inside of their attack animation. Enemy tracking is not just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, but purposefully designed to be unfair.

The auto-target system, will randomly target an enemy off-screen, while you're fighting something 1 character model away from you, and refuse to lock-off the off-screen enemy.

Did you press left and dodge? Sorry nope, you pressed right-down and dodge, oh and you don't get i-frames on this roll so now you're being pushed off a cliff. Fun game!

I'll reiterate the hit-boxes and platforming in this game are some of the worst I've ever seen.

Having all of these terrible space mechanics combined, in the end-game, they'll stick you into a small enclosed arena, with sides you can and will fall off of (for absolutely no reason and fault of your own), and stick 5 enemies in the same enclosed space.

For a game centered around and focusing on Combat, the Combat in this game is absolute garbage.

Yikes...

Walk speed is like crawling.
When running and coming to a stop, the camera pans back 10-15 feet, and the FoV changes dynamically... As if the developers have never actually ran in real life, this is not how perspective works in the real world. I've never once had motion sickness problems in hundreds and hundreds of other games, I guess congratulations on accomplishing a game that does that to someone who's never had that problem.

Puzzles are a complete mess, not even moon-logic-y, just lacking logical steps at all.
Story is terribly written and implemented.

Hit-boxes are a mess. You can only interact with shelves on the front face, so if you try to close a drawer (since you're hovering over a drawer and the reticule turns to a hand) it just opens the drawer underneath the drawer you're hovering on.

Adjusting any graphical setting does nothing and it defaults to 60hz with whatever resolution you chose, sometimes that doesn't even work.
No Fullscreen-windowed mode.

It's as if the developers didn't even playtest the game, or have any idea what they were even doing.

Steer Clear.