I sat on this game for a long while, and I'm glad I went back to it.

I'll admit, I'm quick to quit platformers, because I get lost easy. And I did get lost this playthrough, many, many times. But it was very worth the perseverance. This game is absolutely beautiful, and manages to touch on grief in an amazing way without using words. The benefit of the lack of dialogue means that the player can interpret it in one of many ways, possibly in a way that they can relate to.

The gameplay is honestly pretty average, but not in any way bad. Basic platforming with a few special powers to help in certain areas. In addition to collecting stars to progress the game, you can also do extra platforming puzzles to collect the 'memories', which will get you an extra ending. I very much failed to do this, but it can easily be found on youtube.

I only managed to obtain the story progression achievements, so I can't really speak to how difficult the others are to obtain. Some look simpler than others, though the ones that I find most interesting are the ones that cover the stages of grief.

Absolutely the biggest appeal to this game is the art. While it's beautiful and stunning from the beginning, each chapter will unlock more color to be added back into the world as Gris learns to deal with her grief. That alone is worth the game to me, which was recently on sale for as little as $1.29.

As a side note, the devs also did just drop their newest game, Neva, which looks just as beautiful! I can't afford to pick it up right now but I definitely hope to in the future!

A beautiful game about finding stars that have fallen to the ground and taken on their 'original' form as bugs (and a few other critters).

This game has some real insightful aspects to it. Meaningful messages about looking into yourself and the meaning of things around you. While you might expect all the constellations to give you high-spirited, inspirational messages, some are actually highly relatable about… wanting to give up. Feeling paranoid. Feeling lost. Not what I expected, but I loved it.

The gameplay is very simple - run around and catch bugs in a world that has a limited set of biomes, but they generate around you as you move. It means it can be hard to find the one you're looking for sometimes, but honestly, it's a small enough world that it won't take long. Certain critters spawn in certain territories, and you can also catch some spirits to unlock bigger spirits that'll give you other tools, such as a fishing rod or a radio walkie talkie thing.

Achievements I cannot speak for, as they appear to be broken for steam deck. I know of at least myself and one other user who did not unlock any on their steam deck, so I'm imagining it's a problem with that, though I could be wrong. I did post in the discussions, so hopefully they'll be fixed! Overall, most seemed simple with maybe a few that might take a little bit.

The art is simplistic but beautiful. The music really set the mood, and it just felt like a real nice time playing it. I was able to beat the game in one sitting quite easily, though I did feel a bit bored come the end. It might have felt better to split it into two play sessions. I'm not sure the game would be worth it at full price, but having got it on sale for around $5, it was definitely worth it! Especially considering it was a solo dev. I wish them luck on their future endeavors!

It can be hard to return to a normal life post-war, so Aka decides to do it by gooing to the relaxing island his old war pal grew up on.

I loved the art and character designs in this time. It's very soft and adorable, and while the characters aren't overly detailed, they still felt unique and definitely had character. The different islands you could go to were unique and cool to explore, each having a bit of a different vibe to them.

The gameplay was… eh. I really wanted to like it more than I did. First of all, I wouldn't call it a farming game. Farming is a very miniscule part of this game needed for maybe… 2 or 3 quests. Otherwise, pretty useless. You can make yourself food, but eating it does… nothing. There's not much guidance to the game, so you kind of just have to wander and find things. Which is fine, but some essential parts are intentionally a bit hidden. I was still able to find it all without a walkthrough, but the very start definitely felt a bit… hard to figure out.

A lot of items are limited in gathering, such as iron, but at the same time, you can only use iron for so many items that can only be made once, so I actually just have. A ton of useless iron sitting around. Certain items can only be crafted for quests that would be nice to have as decorations, such as the candle item. The decorations you can get are mostly just the same handful of potted plants obtained by turning in trash, which felt quite pointless after I was just getting repeats.

The game also still has a fair few bugs in it. The ones I encountered were simple, such as after using an action not being able to move forward and needing to sidestep around, but I did see a few game breaking ones in discussions. It sounds like some have been there for a while without being fixed. There were also just a few annoying mechanics, such as moving during an action cancels it. Which can be quite annoying when trying to pick a ton of weeds or harvest all your crops.

The story itself was super sweet. It deals with regret and moving on. How sometimes, even if you are at fault, you need to forgive and continue on living. It also deals with a lot of death, so please be warned that it may be a little upsetting, but I didn't find it to be anything too much. Nothing in detail, just awareness of how someone died.

A few of the quests felt… heavily pointless. No reward, no story progression. Mostly, I'm thinking of the snowman quest. No spoilers but… man, nothing happened. Not even a playing card.

The achievements were overall easy to get, aside from 2 being very grindy - the apple tree and the playing 100 days. I beat the story of the game on day 17. The apple tree takes about 30-ish days to grow. Essentially, I just woke up and went to sleep a lot after finishing the last small quest I had to wrap up post-game. Some of the achievement titles are… misleading, by the way. One says to beat a character in the card game on hard but… a) it was the only way to battle him and b) I think that was the easiest card battle I played in the game. I also got the achievement for making every potion without making the speed potion. The misleading names didn't make it hard, though, just… wasn't expecting to get them when I did.

Overall, it was a pretty good game. I'm glad I played it, but parts definitely felt a bit boring. I can't imagine actually playing 100 days without sleeping them away because there's just… not much to do once you beat the story and finish the quests - of which there's not a lot, by the way. So as much as I wanted to love it, this probably gets more of a neutral rating from me.

This game sure does HURT.

I played this game on stream at request of a friend who purchased it for me. I'm real glad I did, so others could feel my pain with me as I slowly watched half of my children starve to death. Essentially, you are playing as a mother fox in an end-of-the-world type scenario. Animals are going extinct left and right and humans are hunting down the few that are left. Your job is to protect your four cubs - one of whom gets kidnapped pretty quick into the game. You spend the rest of the game hunting it down to rescue it, while trying to keep your other three cubs fed and avoiding predators (most of which are humans).

The art is amazing. The tone of the world is really well done, with trash littering the areas, and the 'bad' humans definitely having a good villain vibe, post-apocalyptical gas masks and all. The further you delve into the world, the more destroyed it feels by humanity. It was… very interesting, and a very terrifying look at how our world may be. So much trash.

The story is heartbreaking but so well done. I don't want to spoil a single thing for it, but just go into it knowing no matter how well you play, it's gonna hurt. But be so incredibly worth it.

The gameplay was pretty simple, but engaging. You're constantly hunting down food for your starving children, avoiding traps and predators. You have to be careful not to lose your cubs by going places they can't reach, but they can also develop new skills to help hunt for the skulk. It's pretty interesting and keeps you engaged for the 30 days of gameplay. It was terrible, though, I could be doing real well for a bit and then suddenly we are all starving to death.

One mechanic I really appreciate is that all your cubs will not starve at once. You only have one hunger bar, and once one cub dies, the bar does go back up about 1/4th. And no, it's not because you eat the cub. It's just nice and made it so I did not immediately lose the game, which I appreciate.

The achievements vary in difficulty. One of them is to finish with all 4 cubs alive which… I do not foresee myself doing to be quite honest. There's a few for story progression, a few silly ones like barking in the rain 3 times, and a few sort of secret ones.

I had a great time, but I don't think I'll go back to 100% it. It was kind of intense, but in a good way. I just feel like trying to grind out missing achievements would ruin it for me - it's not the kind of game I want to use a walkthrough on, I just want to. Vibe and do my best. And I did, and I had a great time with it!