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An almost perfect experience. Soundtrack, artstyle, gameplay mechanics, narrative, length, everything simply works. While the last level took slightly longer than I'd have liked, I was genuinely emotional when it ended. No filler, all polish.

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The Inner World is a decent but far from perfect point-and-click adventure game. Graphics are very charming, and voice acting is mostly well done. I didn't encounter any major bugs, besides some translation mishaps on written elements vs. the spoken dialogue (probably the person who translated the script was not the same one who translated the in-world graphics). Writing is mostly okay, with a nice story that goes by pretty quickly, some decent jokes, and some meh ones. Overall I couldn't fault it.

My two main issues come from the spoken dialogue and the difficulty/moon logic. For the spoken dialogue, it's really well done, but characters have a lot to say about everything, and they talk somewhat slowly. Also when they're talking, action is interrupted, so the game flow is reaally, reaaaaallly slow. Pacing suffers a bit from that, but it's a bit hard to see how the game could avoid that, being a point-and-click adventure game. The moon logic issue is one that is almost inherent to the genre, and makes me wonder why I still play it. Chapters 1 and 2 are mostly fine in this regard, but from Chapter 3 onward, the logical leaps you have to make start to get pretty wild. At least the game is decent enough to provide a really good hint system, and there's even an achievement for making use of it!

Overall, it's nothing ground-breaking but has a few issues here and there. Good for point-and-click adventure game fans, but might not be everyone's piece of cake and I'd stay away from it if you're not a massive fan of the genre.

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On A, I thought I was having fun
because of interesting mechanics, charming graphics and decent voice acting

On B, the plot thickened,
with new characters, more twists, and quaint settings

But by C, I was getting tired,
of the slow gameplay, the repetitive nature of the puzzles, the pixel hunting and the moon logic,
plus endless pop-ups celebrating every mundane click with meaningless achievements,

And by the time I finished my ABC and got to D,
I was ready to uninstall this uninspired game and never look back on it

At first glance, Poirot's world seemed bright,
With mysteries to solve and clues in sight

The art style charmed, the voices rang true,
Each scene painted in a vintage hue

But patience wore thin as the hours crawled by,
Click here, click there, with many a sigh
"Achievement Unlocked!" the screen would cheer,
For picking up a spoon or walking near

The puzzles grew stale, logic went astray,
What should have been thrilling became child's play

From Andover's start to the final scene,
This adaptation felt stuck in between—
Not quite a game, not quite a book,
Just a tired mystery that lost its hook

Guacamelee! was an enormous letdown, a big disappointment.

For the 2.5 hours I spent with the game, it never went above mid. Exploration was never a thrill because the game signals very obviously (through the use of colors) whether you have the powerup needed to progress through an area or not. It's very jarring and unnatural to be roaming around a dungeon and then see these giant colored blocks that clearly represent a skill you haven't gotten yet. It's like, I know this is a Metroidvania but I expect the game to make some effort hiding these locks and keys.

Additionally, tying navigation to skills that are linked to stamina (such as the uppercut for vertical navigation) is limiting and sometimes force you to simply stop what you are doing and wait until your stamina recharges to be able to … move. It is terrible for pacing and breaks the flow. Combat is mostly mid, with no real good feel to it -- you mostly bash combos, but if you end up falling to the ground when the enemy was just winding up it's attack animation, you'll get hit without any chance to counter, for instance. The game loves to pit you in small arenas against waves of enemies, to the point it becomes hard to even read the situations, much less to react to them. Hit detection is quite bad, meaning you'll be inches from your enemy hitting the air, only for them to counter you heavily. Nowhere this was more obvious than during these Combo challenges, where the game asks you to perform a long combo in a certain order, and while pressing the buttons is not hard, hitting the enemy is where the challenge lies.

With the movement tied to stamina, platforming challenges become a chore. Jumps are a bit floaty and you don't have all the control that some of the timed jumps require. The character is very quick to snatch to walls, meaning sometimes you want to jump up a platform but instead hugs the wall, and jumping again sends you flying on the opposite way you want to go.

Lastly, I'll admit the theme of the game is really good, we don't see enough games themed around Mexican culture and the whole luchador vibe, but dialogue is really weak and the quests are quite basic. A Metroidvania that is not fun to explore, not fun to move around and not fun to fight against enemies is really a bad Metroidvania after all. I'm shocked it can carry a 90/95% rating on Steam -- people who rate it positively will be blown away when they play actually good Metroidvanias

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Undertale has to be one of the most charming and well-written games I've played in the last few years, but that completely misses the mark in the final 15 minutes.

It was one of the most jarring experiences I've ever had, going from a really interesting and mature take on the usual JRPG formula and videogame logic and morals, all the while keeping the gameplay forever interesting with new takes and variations on the same base system. While the visuals do not earn it a lot of bonus points, they are at least readable and contribute to a vibe that is highly enhanced not only by the writing, but also by the stellar soundtrack. But then, the game moves to a random fever dream without anything to say or show for it. If the first 5 and a half hours weren't so strong, I would probably not recommend the game from the last 15 minutes alone.

Still, it's a solid game that deserves the praise it gets, although even almost-perfect gems have it's moments of oddities that bring it down a notch.

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Kairo is a weird game, and I mean that as a compliment.

It's a 3D first-person puzzle game, through and through. I don't know why some people chose the walking sim tag, as I feel the vibe is completely different to that of games like Gone Home, Tacoma, or the Suicide of Rachel Foster. In those games, puzzle solving is almost secondary, and you're there to soak in the detailed environments. Kairo, on the other hand, is a world made of impossibly gigantic megastructures of raw concrete that have very little detail and are connected by ethereal gateways, each one with an (usually) self-contained puzzle to be solved before you can proceed. The core of the game is figuring out what you can do in each room, and then, what you need to do to 'solve' it.

This intricate architecture is ominous and foreboding, aided by some weird lighting artifacts and the immaculate (yet terrifying) soundtrack. The dev has told in interviews that the early releases of the game had calm and soothing music, and he decided to switch it for a dark, rhytmic track that keeps you on the edge. It's alienating. It helps to explain the 'Horror' and 'Psychological Horror' tags, because the combination of visuals, sound and the blurred depth of field limiting your view cone, plus some elements like a coffin room and a skeleton on a throne definitely are edgy.

Despite all of that, I liked it. It was reasonably easy to get through, with many puzzles not being obvious but also not obtuse. I have used a guide in a screen or two after a lot of unsuccessful tinkering. It's not a game for everyone or that can be played at any time, but if you're in that particular spot where this will work, go for it.

One of those games that make you wonder - what even is a game? How and when did this end up in my library?

The Space Between is a short walking sim, focused on surreal psychological horror and subtext. It evokes a lot of arthouse films in my mind. The graphics are mostly low-poly which are really charming, but diffuse and hazy in a way that adds to the horror. The playtime is mostly dictated by how long the dialogue takes to roll, since there is little / no exploration at all in the game. How you feel and what you take of the experience is completely up in the air - but for me, it was mostly an uncomfortable experience without resolution. It's interesting as a narrative experiment, but it's clearly not something for the masses. It's weird, and some people like it, but I'm not sure if I did

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Crisp gameplay, graphics, animations, soundtrack and sound effects. The pacing is mostly great, with good cooldown moments between the action-packed levels. During these cooldown moments, there's a lot of good world-building, character development and incredible writing. So if you've read everything I wrote so far, you imagine this game is close to perfect.

But then we get to the main gameplay loop, where I believe the game falters a bit.

See, I love the moveset available. Slashing in different directions, slo-mo, bullet deflect, dodge roll, wall jump, everything you need is there. When you die, it's a quick reset and you're back again. What frustrated me were some of the level designs requiring almost pinpoint accuracy to get through. I can only think of Celeste when I think about these harder levels, but the difference is that with Celeste, the level was static. You could work your way through the level bit by bit. Here, there's some level of randomness with enemy placements, whether they see you or not, whether they decide to shoot or not, at which angle they shoot, and so forth. While an argument could be made that this keeps the game fresher and more unpredictable, forcing you to think on your feet, I think that creates a tension, a contrast with the former goal of being a precision action game.

I couldn't stop thinking how great and how frustrating this game was at the same time, and that is a shame. While it's still a great game that I'd totally recommend to people, and I absolutely loved the delicate dance that boss fights were (I wouldn't mind fighting 10 more phases of the Headhunter, what a great fight), I still find it hard to justify this game having a 97% on SteamDB and putting it above Elden Ring, Deus Ex, Stanley Parable, Rain World and other games. It's good, but not to the point I had hyped it up before playing it.