Reviews

I won't beat around the bush: the only reason this game gets a "Recommended" and not an "Exceptional" rating is its short length. A labor of love of a single developer who did all of the animation, artwork, and storyboarding for the entire game (he had some help with the sound design and the ports), I loved every moment that I spent playing this game but I beat and replayed the game in less than two hours total. Given the price of the game and the amount of potential in both its mechanics and its ambience, I was disappointed enough that it ended so quickly that it hurt my enjoyment of the game.

Onto the good! As I said above, I loved every aspect of this game. The art direction and sound design are phenomenal, and the core gameplay is very solid. The idea of manipulating these little tiles containing interactive scenes by combining and rearranging them is simple enough to figure out immediately but builds into incredibly intricate puzzles. The puzzles are at the perfect difficulty level where you wrack your brain trying to figure them out but they are incredibly intuitive in retrospect, leading to these incredible a-ha moments where you feel like a genius finally putting the pieces together. I actually thought that the game's approach to storytelling -- focusing heavily on ambience and leaving the core elements of what happened in gameplay slightly ambiguous -- complemented the often ethereal and mysterious answers to different puzzles. While the short length meant that the themes developed over the course of the story are introduced and resolved very quickly (which was a bit jarring), they were still quite interesting and there is one story based a-ha moment that left me thinking after the game was done. Overall, I appreciated the gameplay a lot and would recommend the game, although you'll probably be grumbling about the price tag a bit unless you get it at a steep discount.

Concise Review:
Amazing short little puzzle game. The atmosphere and art design is top notch. I loved the aesthetic. I loved the different areas. I loved all the different deaths. The puzzles were creative and built upon themselves while keeping it unique throughout the whole experience. Only thing holding it back from higher ranks is the ~3 hour playtime. I loved every minute of it. 

Journal Style Review:

I Immediately like the art style. Looks very nice. Also the guys killing the kid in that first scene was cool. I like that the kid gets killed. Oh god then he gets shot and then drowned! Great deaths so far. Within like 10 minutes I can tell I love the style of this game. The graphics, lighting, and atmosphere are very well done. Will the gameplay and puzzles be good is the question. 

The eaten by dog death is quite brutal. Why do I find these deaths satisfying?

First 30 mins of puzzles have been pretty good. I’ve felt clever a few times.

Maybe 1 hour or 1.5 hours in. I’m thoroughly enjoying this game. I’ve said it before but this art style and atmosphere works so well for me. The puzzles have been very clever so far as well. Or at least they feel clever. I am trying to think about how I can solve the problems, not “what do the developers want me to do” it’s a subtle difference that makes a huge difference in my enjoyment of puzzle games. I don’t always like puzzle game but this one really is working for me.

I’m internally struggling on where to place this game in the mega games ranking because I’m really enjoying it and think it’s very well done, but I know it’s short. The length of a game affects my rankings in the all time favourite games lists. It will be interesting to see where it lands. Very strong start though.

This game is a fucking adventure. I love it. Each new section has been great.

The puzzles are fantastic. They do a great job of building upon the last challenge and there are unique new objects or scenarios to keep it fresh.

Final blob area was amazing as well. This short little game was maybe 3 hours and every minute of it from start to finish was great. My only complaint is that I wish it was longer. I loved the journey that little kid took. Very cool game. Very cool. Ends as a high B+ which so far is the highest I’ve ranked a game this short. Also the highest 2D platformer/puzzle game. I’m impressed.

Final Score: B+

Thought this was solid but it's kinda obvious they don't have many new ideas. Cyber-elves are revamped for some reason: satellite elves are a cool idea, even though it's pretty much all Animal elves, but "fusion" makes no sense as a term; e-crystals are so easy to get and there's a cyber elf you get to double drops pretty early that e-crystals still might as well not exist; the leveling system is confusing and unclear; permanent upgrades are also unclear; some elves are just straight better than others. Attaining EX skills is still kind of dumb and rankings are just padding, especially with the new armor parts and elemental types and especially because you can get a bunch of "A-rank" cyber elves very early. Secret disks are more padding. That computer stage in the second half where you have to find the four correct doors is more padding. Too much dialogue, especially before boss fights (at least it's skippable). I still can't imagine playing this on an actual GBA without the save assist points, doubly so if I had to sit through all that dumb dialogue every time. They changed the rod again and the new form is only used intermittently. Cyberspace feels pointless and isn't really addressed diagetically.

The level design is great, the armor parts system is the exact right kind of addition this game, weapon upgrade system is way improved (a) by removing the levelling system and (b) adding more cyber elves to upgrade weapons, the character upgrades finally feel meaningful (with an extra step for some reason), and other than the fire bug thing the bosses are fun. But yeah the changes they made seem superfluous and things that could have been changed still haven't. The "twist" reveal at the end is fine but doesn't necessarily add anything thematically. There's a solid game under here, but no more or less than MMZ2.