Randomice

This is a really fun game for the first couple hours or so. The art, audio, and gameplay are great and it feels like you're making genuine progress. The puzzle solving mixed with platforming is super enjoyable. Then it gets REALLY repetitive as the gameplay is tweaked just enough so that you aren't good at it anymore. Overall enjoyable but not enough content for the long term.

It's a great game for getting a sense of what running a randomizer feels like! It starts easy but slowly ramps up in complexity, mixing up more and more stuff as you learn how to navigate the house and what to expect from each NPC. The movement is also very smooth and satisfying, and the writing often made me chuckle. There's more content than I thought and I'm not even done with the optional challenges yet!

This game feels like a dream game for a casual who loves randomizers. I really enjoy watching people play randomizers in games like Ocarina of Time, Super Mario Odyssey, etc.. But the thought of playing a randomizer myself has always felt out of reach. Not only do you need to figure out how to play an emulator or modded game of some sort, it also feels like you need to know the game you randomize really well. Not to mention I can't imagine how long it would take to play a full game. It's mainly felt like an activity for speedrunners. This game makes a randomizer feel accessible. It's short and simple enough per run that it doesn't feel like a time commitment. The mechanics are simple to understand and well tutorialized that knowledge won't be a limitation. There's also a hint system if you ever feel stuck; it shows 1 item you should be able to grab. I can see the inspiration from the Ocarina of Time randomizer (directly mentioned in the game). The randomized aspects feel like I can truly play on "max settings" and not feel incredibly frustrated at my own inadequacy. I would go over what things get randomized, but I feel like the campaign is so well done at introducing everything slowly that I think it's fine that I don't. But if you know anything about randomizers, it has a lot of the settings I often see played. I also really enjoy the gameplay itself. The abilities are fun to use, and very satisfying to gain every run. The movement is SO good; something incredibly important for a randomizer game where you constantly need to backtrack everywhere when you get new abilities and are doing fetch quests. Some other notes: - campaign story was pretty good - campaign as a tutorial was really well done - the design of having multiple possible ways of accessing a check was well done. It has a lot of "you can have ability A or B or C+D to access this check", while also having some checks require 1 very specific ability. - the game tells you when you get a check "out of logic," which is very satisfying to see - My favorite in game dev note was about how the blowtorch shuts off after a while because the dev ran out of breath while recording the wind sound. - Sound design is good. It's funny to realize a lot of the sound effects are just the dev's voice I've only completed the campaign at the time of review. Took ~10 hours.