Sylvio

Confusing, charming, with raw edges. Gameplay is simple, battles are not really a problem, most of the game is just running around the location and doing some puzzles. A lot of cryptic lore. The game is weird to the point of being sometimes perplexing, but i find Sylvio sweet, it's a passion project. It's more about the vibes, to be honest. Check it out if you ever feel nostalgic for 2010s indie horror games.

I'm going to recommend this game because it has cool ideas, clever puzzles, great audio, love the voice acting, the music, and there is a peculiar mood that makes it special. And was made by practically one person, such a big accomplishment.
This said, I'm going to expose a few things that made the experience quite negative for me. The developer can stop reading now :D
My first try, a few years ago, I didn't understand anything, I kept dying, the recorder didn't seem to work and I was really confused about when I have to record things with the microphone. I wanted to kill Kurt Indovina who recommended the game and uninstalled it (the game, not Kurt Indovina).
Now I'm cleaning my backlog and decided to take a second try. This time I read the manual first and it was a huge change, because there are a few concepts that are difficult to grasp just playing. I understand that the developer didn't want to use cutscenes to make the game more immersive but it makes very difficult to realize what's happening and some base ideas like shooting nails to clouds don't make sense in terms of logic, and the feedback isn't obvious when you do it, so you think wrongly you're doing nothing when you try new things.
My big problem is that I can't see anything in this game. I missed objects that are in front of me, and having like a million collectibles here I only got a few reels. And looking for entrances in the walls was very difficult.
The reels are related to the story. I don't know if it made more sense taking all, I don't know what the recorder fast forward and slower were for and worst, didn't get the main beats of the story. Not having subtitles or a transcription for the reels didn't help. So when I ended the game I was totally confused and the only thing I got is that people died in several disasters and there was some kind of experiment and a "twist" that came from nowhere. And I was doing things like morse signals that didn't make any sense and made me jump to the next chapter without any perceived logic.
When my painful eyes could see anything behind the fog and the old school confusing and repetitive 3d, the meshes didn't make any sense. I get the idea of everything is rusted and deformed by time, but it's too much, there are objects that doesn't seem remotely what they're supposed to be. The rusted texture was too noisy and illumination didn't help. Even the big balloons were rusted, first time I saw one I though it was a giant stone monster or something.
The flutes puzzle was the most cryptic thing I've ever played and I was shooting to the words because I couldn't see a damn thing. The cart get busted and couldn't use it, fortunately, it was fixed turning the game off and on. The other problem I had is in the zoo, were the "it worked like a charm" audio got stuck at the beginning of my save and there was a terrible noise going all the time until I got to the observatory. The alpha of the black clouds wasn't in the correct order in the first level and they were invisible depending of the area.
The engine was quite robust and I didn't get trapped anywhere, so kudos for the good work.
So, a good/bad experience that needed more accesibility for me. Not going to retry and look for all the collectibles because my eyes got too tired and are difficult as hell to see.
A bit of a masochist experience.