Great game strongly reminiscient of the Wicker Man, most puzzles were thematic and reasonable with only a few exceptions. The art is well done but I think it isn't as creepy as the devs thought, this along with weird distance scaling makes the pixelated artstyle occasionally become a seam in the experience. The story was really well done and whilst some open ended questions were great (MILD SPOILERSfor the rest of paragraph) like the "fair people" who are never explicitly explained, others are frustrating. This includes the fire-jets in the bathroom or the fates of some villagers, like the priest. The presence of Mediterranean languages was great to see as someone with a degree in Classics, but there are occasional errors like the mistaking of a Sigma for an Epsilon. Also the final puzzle I thought originally had to be solved using the Latin poem, which was need though unrealistic for most people, but ultimately I looked it up and you can solve the maze without even reading the poem. I ultimately wish that more English culture was used (MAJOR SPOILER) instead of Abraxas, an old English diety would have felt more focused. It's cool to see the Greco-Roman reveal at the end and it is disorienting to a degree, but I don't think it was the right choice. Overall a great game with minor problems and I'm excited to check out more of the dev's games and will be buying some of the bonus content!
Simply a janky game, from the animations to the story. Emotional beats fall flat, implications for the relatively coherent part of the story are overdone due to the lack of dialogue, animations go from one key pose to another in a very artificial way. I understand this isn't trying to be a conventional game experience, but it fails at what it tries to be as well in my eyes, they could not sell the humanity of the characters without dialogue and with such abstract character models, the frequent "trippy" parts felt dull, the downtime between interactions was simply confusing, as I threw my mouse across the environment looking for an interactable or for the next section to start. The nonsensical parts of the story are unprecendented and more confusing than anything else. Abstract art can be less demanding from the creator in a variety of ways but demands excellent ideas behind it to support any impact it can make, put simply, this game combines the style of Picasso with the artistic depth of Suess. Occasionally visually appealling, but eccentric for the sake of being so.
