Reverie definitely felt like the high-point, and whilst I had some issues with picture-taking thanks to the strange ways of saving lossless images rdein has utilized, I definitely feel like I got my money's worth from it. But I had Reverie Under the Moonlight and knew the earlier games were either free or available on Steam, so I hammered through 'em to watch the dev make improvements on their art and coding abilities. Okay, the first one was more Cave Story but with real guns and also girls, and 3 was more a sequence of levels with backtracking potential. Autumn '21 was the season of search-action. I still LIKE the game of course, but that bit made me wince a little. The writing fell flat at times too, feeling a bit… I suppose forced? Cliche? I'm not too sure, but with a time-travel plot, having someone say "oh hey keep an eye on, you'll like 'em in the future!" just feels tacky. This doesn't sound TOO bad to begin with - some emphasis was put into animation and writing, but these could feel at-odds with each other, as someone might've been begging for their life but their portrait was still just looking mildly smug. Though I feel like the characters were a bit stiff, in that each character had one portrait each. And it's a solid game with a bit more grey areas in the story than other games I've played in the past. When I did play through it, I was pleasantly surprised - a pixel-art game with a minimum resolution of 400*240! They really committed to the style rather than have it be a veneer like Binding of Isaac or Stardew. I forget where I first heard of this one - I think maybe from a blog on Tumblr? I know I had it wishlisted and then picked it up at the end of 2018, but didn't touch it until after I'd finished uni and returned home. It still sticks in my mind to this day - in a good way, of course! Farewell was a bit tougher, and I'm still being very iffy about that final Golden clear given my own troubles? But a game's gotta be good if I'm wanting to try the no-death-clear challenges and managed to get the base game cleared after some blistered thumbs and at least one ruined controller. But hey it turns out, removing all the things that make a game frustrating and replacing them with things like "sensible volume settings", "great original sound track", "interesting characters and interactions" and "picturesque scenery" makes a game freakin' amazing! Which isn't to throw shade at IWBTG of course (it's good in its own way - formative, one might say!) but Celeste just knocks everything out of the park for me. I knew it'd be tough, but I've played shit like IWBTG so I was prepared for some rough-going for gameplay.
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