My personal GOTY of 2025!!!
I'd been desperately waiting for this to release on GOG, and spent the last year consuming so much original release content on youtube to see people's reactions. I've since decided to not look up anything on the later "final" updates so I still have some new surprises when I play for myself semi-blind. I've been waiting specifically to catch this on sale, and even at full price, this game is BEYOND worth its weight in gold for what it includes, soundtrack as well!
What if The Thing and Undertale had a Cronenberg-esque baby? This is what you get. It's horrifying, disturbing, and still wholesome and a light in the darkness (depending on how you play it). With the many different directions you can take your character and the choices you make, each playthrough can be entirely different, and you may run into new characters and enermies that you hadn't seen on a previous run. The roguelite aspects of each run can determine a lot about how each run goes in a great and fresh way rarely seen in RPGs, and immensely increases its replayability AND your desire to play it multiple times over. I normally won't replay games, if I even finish them, but this had me so instantly hooked that I plan on doing some acheivement hunting once I've gotten a solid idea of how to git gud.
I normally don't even write reviews very often at all, but this game, the composer, and the solo dev (who livestreams a lot of his game dev work mulitple times a week!) all deserve a chance to be played by anyone even remotely into horror games. And if you're willing to brave the horrors within, I'm sure you'll find your own light in the dark. <3