Cradle

very atmospheric, a hidden gem. Stuck once or twice, used a tutorial but otherwise the story is captivating. The soundtrack is one of the greatest in video games btw.

I have kind of deja vu with this game because I'm not sure if I already played it years ago or not... it seems kinda familiar though and not sure why but it reminds me of Syberia games.

Really fantastic game, I just completed it. I love the story and vibe!
It's an open world game combined with block puzzle minigames. Really fun, and if you can't figure out a minigame, you can skip it without any consequences.
The game of course has some stuff that could use tweaking, but all in all it feels very much like a small piece of a triple A title.
The universe that the studio has created in this game is absolutely incredible, what a beautiful experience.
The only negative thing about Cradle is that you are left yearning for more!

A strange, unique adventure game, you are a Mongolian man, the last of his line, living in his ancestral yurt, in possesion of a inactive female android known as an m-body (no, she's not for that kind of use), and friends with a strange hawk named Ongots. The man knows all this, yet he doesn't know how. Thus does he begin his journey of self-discovery....
The story is a bit dense in places, really requiring serious study to make sense of. But what's there is fascinating.
The voice-acting is not the greatest, with the voice actors trying to inject emotion into their lines and occassionally succeeding, but otherwise sounding monotone.
And the puzzles? Because you can carry just about anything you see, the early puzzles can get quite confusing - especially since some objects can be both grabbed and looked at, depending on what part of the object you're aiming at. Not to mention the hint system assumes you know what things look like or whereabouts to go, only to get lost or unable to figure out what goes with what. A great example of this is the very first puzzle of the game: make Ongots the Hawk's favorite soup. Unless you happen to know the common modern language of Mongolia (I assume that's what much of the non-English text in the game is written in), you'll have no idea where the salt and pepper are - though mercifully, the game lets you dump all the seasonings in until you get the right broth coloration instead of forcing you to redo the puzzle - even if you've read the recipe, what the game counts as a "mortar" and "pestle" is strange, and you can wander the nearby lake, which is closer-looking to a swamp than a lake, for awhile before finally finding the one tree with berries. Also, as a nitpick, for those who've played more traditional adventure games, the complete lack of combining items in your inventory, instead combining them in the world itself, can be quite confusing at first, but I was able to get used to it quickly.
As for the game itself? It's jank. Every time the game changes locations or resolutions, it resizes the game window - not a problem back when exclusive fullscreen was the only way to game at max performance, but a pain for trying to set up a borderless windowed solution. Mouse movement feels sluggish thanks to forced negative mouse acceleration that cannot be disabled. Furthermore, the game chugs when loading in objects for some reason, not to mention the game has a horrible implementation of MSAA, meaning it tanks the framerate when enabled. The latter is easy enough to fix, just don't enable MSAA, but the loss of quality is definitely noticable.
Overall, it's a mixed bag, but you're willing to deal with some Slavjank, I think you'll enjoy this adventure game.

I will just start with this game has its jank, and the mini game levels kinda pull me out every time. I honestly dreaded having to move those dang cubes. But man, the story was so satisfying! I loved every moment and I wanted to know every juicy detail. While the ending felt very rushed, there was a lot for me to contemplate. If you are looking for a good dystopian scifi story with some cool inventory puzzles, I cant recommend it enough to give this game a try.

Provides a unique glance into a (a weird future version of) Mongolia. The cube levels felt out of place, and it was a bit short but I mostly enjoyed it. I would recommend if on sale.

Mixed feelings about this one, very well-written world with lots of tiny details, but it's also a hassle to find all of the texts - and the "puzzle" sections are just an eyesore, they completely break the style and have no business being in the game honestly. If you took those out, this might be the only walking sim I've ever found interesting