Made me cry, and gave me one of the strongest epiphanies I have ever experienced in a video game when I grasped what the point of it all was. The barely above average writing hardly affects the experience, when the surrounding package is so brilliant. A perfect portrayal of the existence of buried trauma. Coming back years later to elaborate a bit. What the game does is frame the inability to live in the present in a unique way that only becomes apparent as your frustration in not learning what the truth of the past is grows. You are faced with a real and current situation, and every action is purely devoted to rediscovering and trying to draw out past experiences and trauma. The fact that the game manages to place you in this exact headspace despite being the single most barebones interactive experience ive ever tried is remarkable, and its a shame that sam barlow's future efforts have overcomplicated themselves and stopped the pure simplistic thesis that is on offer here.

movement and attacks feel great. in run upgrades feel a bit too simple but not too bad. its a bit overwhelming when there are multiple enemies on screen. dialogue is remarkably bad. worst part is context sensitive keyboard keys - there are different buttons to accept different things, one of which uses very valuable healing items. what a stupid decision!!!! and the other bad part is the spell rotation - i do not have the ability to keep track of which spell will be next, and the visual indicator isnt big enough to remedy this.

The look of it is pretty rough on the eyes. Gameplay and progression is relatively good if unexceptional.