DREAMWILD

Beautiful game hindered only by the strange decision to make it a fast paced roguelite.
To get the negatives out of the way first: Game is insanely unbalanced.
The first area has frustrating enemies that seem almost anti-fun, and I have a feeling this plus the lack of direction will end up gatekeeping a large amount of people.
Combat with no upgrades is also very annoying, since more prominently enemies have iframes that can cause you to waste attacks, and less prominently the game has the master sword mechanic where being above a certain amount of HP makes your sword a gun instead.
Thankfully the sword itself hits like a truck if you actually use it to melee which is nice, but I'm of the opinion that enemies really just shouldn't have iframes, or the attack rate of the sword should be reduced + an accessibility option to hold left click should be added instead of forcing the player to discipline their attacks. One could say that the player learning to play around the iframes is skilled, but one could also say it doesn't matter when your 30 damage light beam two shots everything, No ?
However, staying in the area then getting even a single attack upgrade pretty much flips this instantly. When I chose to just get enough Gubbins to buy upgrades and came back instead of exploring or seeing what's out there, I pretty much one shot everything and could never take damage ever again. Additionally, once you progress past the first area, the enemies are far more reasonable and I would even argue underpowered until you get to the "final" level.
Additionally, the game has an expectation for you to like the protagonist and deuteragonist, but I finished a regular run of the game way too quickly and witnessed basically two conversations between them. I think it's a massive sin that this game was designed this way instead of some other kind of traditional action rpg, because there's pretty much no space for the deuteragonist to be cute when I stop sugarcoating it after 3 upgrades.
There should be way more story and way less Quake Dogfighting Simulator.
As for the good, psychedelic visuals and soundtrack make it very worth getting over the first bump. The game is actually fun once you make it out of the first level. The game could use more things to uncover, but there is an okay amount to find.
Also, for some reason, they just give up with this pixel-y vibe in cutscenes. Don't tell me that a higher resolution will mess up the pixels if you remove the shader yourself....
TLDR
combat sucks at the start, upgrades are op. add more story. make dreamwild prequel where you walk instead of ignore the environment while Thé à la Menthe plays
everything else is good and beautiful and sound good your ears
remove that annoying ahh eyeball enemy from the first area or at least make him spawn with a slow spawn animation near the player so he doesnt push gubbins and other enemies 560 meters away

Despite not beating it yet I really found this game fun to play. I sucked at the start but then started to slowly get better at it. It's easy to grind out the first area for Gubbins to get upgrades before proceeding to newer Dream Wilds (♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that's the name of the game!) I love the world and character design so damn much and the music helps the vibe of the game. It feels like one of those old PC games back in the 90's or early 2000's you'd find randomly and get obsessed with. Thank you Karbonic for making these amazing games and I hope to see more in the future.

Not really my kind of fun gameplay-wise. I was kind of expecting something a little different when I saw the top-down screenshot. But the aesthetic and vibes from this go hard and it's not particularly difficult or expensive. I say give it a whirl.

Really fun, great way to kill time, with a great art style and story. The game has nostalgic qualities, feels like playing a Ps1 game. What I like most about the game is the lack of direction, I didn't know there was items for the longest time (other than the eye and potion.) This really plays into the nostalgic feeling, you're simply dropped into the world and figure it out. Oh, and the potion is clutch for getting any items from the floating platforms, (Right click after pressing shift to change the potion to green to jump way higher.)
The surfing and combat quickly become addictive as you reattempt worlds, definitely the highlight of the game. Shop and point storage is a great mechanic, saves time on future runs or great to "save" progress if you need to leave.
Hopefully the development team adds more to the game!

Quake-like movement is built into the game and is a soft requirement for making any significant progress. Certain elements in the tutorial room are impossible to reach without strafe jumping, and enemies move way too fast for holding down WASD to be viable. If you're a fan of boomer shooters and psychedelic visuals, I would highly recommend the game.

For a game so hard to get into, I’m somewhat obsessed with this obtuse organic object. The core gameplay loop with the enemy and environment designs are so strikingly unique that it makes this game feel like it came from another universe full of peak games like itself. It’s so out of the box, a momentum movement based horde game is not something I’ve ever seen before or probably will again. Not everything comes to together, such as a relatively weak final boss compared to the learning pains of the beginning game, but worth it for anyone who wants to surf 1000 miles high up into the sky while a flock of squids chase you to the near brink of heaven.

Really good and really beautiful. I was quite surprised to see only two names in the credits after beating the game. This was made with great talent and great soul. It is most definitely worth buying