Animal Well

It's a great and very well designed puzzle-platformer, but for me the main weakness is how much like a "video game" it feels. Since most of the game is mechanical puzzles you have to resolve in a one specific way, it never achieves the sense of a living breathing alien world that Hollow Knight or, especially, Rain World had.

i've never cared for metroidvanias but this instantly clicked with me

This game's mechanics are so innovative and interactive, that it makes me feel like it's such a shame that so many puzzles in the game feel inelegant. I love how so many of the elements interact together to solve puzzles, but I oftentimes found myself accidentally solving puzzles, which is not good for a puzzle game. It's fine to be accidentally perceiving the answer, because that's what solving is, but if you move, and then you go "Oh. I've solved the puzzle. Oh now I get it." Then it's kind of a bummer. And that's what happened to me too many times in this game.

The controls feel so nice, and I love the look and feel of the world, so I had an overall breezy time with it, so I overall enjoyed it, but as a puzzle game, it left me wanting. The best parts of the game were recognising patterns in the world, and then realising that you can do something to get to those places before you move anywhere, and then you do it, and it works. Those were those Eureka moments that worked beautifully, and I wish there were more of those, but I'd say it was about 40% Eureka moments, and 60% either super easy puzzles or accidentally solved puzzles. Which isn't a terrible ratio, per se, but doesn't really push it into classic status for me, like some of my favourite puzzle games.

the setting in this game is fucking awesome. a weird, atmospheric, dream-like world that makes absolutely no sense. I love everything about it.

where's the fucking motorcycle

Great creative game. Just so .any time wasting design decisions. Annoying pixel perfect jumps. Backtracking several screens after a fall or failed puzzle. Sucked a lot of enjoyment out of the game for me. Still very impressive and unique tho.

I like when big content creators fund real game developers to make the games they want to play. Reckful tried it but rip. I hope it inspires more content creators to fund indie game development.