Gyokuyoutama

Next Fest is still ongoing but I went through some demos this weekend and I wanna blab about them before they fade from my mind:
Data Center: This is every bit as terribly jank as I thought it'd be, but it was funny. I got the hand cart stuck in the data center hallway and made it impossible to efficiently move equipment. I didn't really expect anything technical but it was more simplified than I thought it'd be. Fate/Trigger: Anime PUBG. It's a pretty competently made game, but doesn't really go head and shoulders beyond the genre. Has a serious "characters blab too much" and also a "characters do not have enough unique voice lines" issue which is a bad combination to have. Also padding lobbies with bots, unless console players are literally that bad at the game (I refuse to believe they are). Vehicles, as usual, kind of ruin the game due to completely dominating teamfights with their massive health pools. The shooting is pretty nice. Apparently in this playtest they upped damage for everything and it feels a bit too lethal. Gal Vs Village: Like twenty minutes of gameplay tops and extremely barebones but has an endearingly scrappy nature to it. There's not even a y axis on the mouse! The actual shooting, dash, and melee feel pretty good despite how janky everything looks. The dash and melee feel a bit anachronistic with how retro everything else is but it's pretty fun. Also the spreadshot MG's design is fucked up. There's even an AMV embedded in the game's main menu... which is weird. Cicadamata: Neon White clone with more terrible visual filter crap everywhere. Despite the visuals it seems fairly well put together, you jump around real fast to collect things then get out of the level. Enemies often have secondary functions as mobility tools which is pretty common for the genre. I question how they made everything so intentionally blocky but then went out of their way to give the robot MC design a round ass that you see every end of level screen. Marathon Server Slam™: Having recently played Marathon 2- actually let's not pretend there's any attempt at a throughline with this game, I mainly played because I was bored and someone asked me to try it. Uh.... It sure is a tarkov clone? I do not get the appeal of this genre at all tbh, it's like a marriage of the unfun parts of BR games (looting, incentives to ignore fighting, etc) with even more menuing downtime added between every match. The presentation is unique and the graphics are pretty interesting. I liked the atmosphere of the first area. The "heroes" design looked fucking terrible across the board but it may be intentional with the "more marketable Cruelty Squad" aesthetic they seem to be approaching. I'd say I liked the gunplay but it all feels really sluggish, like the game is at half speed for everything, maybe it gets better if you're kitted with high tier gear but there ain't no way I'm grinding stuff out just to approach an appropriate level of responsiveness in an FPS game. If you've found any fun shooter demos in next fest I've not said above let me know so I can try them too :DDD

Man I miss RightStufAnime.
 
EDIT: I thought I was in the anime thread, but whatever, sentiment still stands.  I miss that store.
 
Who knew that one storefront was holding up sane distribution of anime, manga and light novels for the entire country.

Lately I just purchase games by smell.
 
That is, I look at the art style, the marketing, and what gameplay features it has and let my subconscious make a snap judgement about whether I should play it or not.
 
Sorry, my subconscious said no on this one.  And since it's my subconscious, I literally cannot elaborate.

I really appreciate that cats is at least polite with his greeting. What a standup guy.
 
Every time I watch this video I see "The Little AleInn" sign edit and I'm like "oh hey I've been there!" and I never rememeber that it's in the video 

It was 25 years ago today that the legendary All Your Base video hit Newgrounds.
 
https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/11940
 
Yeah, it existed before that, being posted to random sites as flash videos were at the time, but we can't date the actual creation so this is good enough.
 
In honor of this anniversary, what is your favorite line from the intro?
 
(Also this is a place for general Zero Wing discussion or ancient Newgrounds discussion, I guess.)

I've literally been watching this at least five times a day:
 
 
And now I've tricked at least a handful of you into watching it as well.
 
Julls for the Jull Jhrone.

my fuwamoco tshirt is pretty fire tbh

Move the doomsday clock back a few seconds. I got fanart into an official love live stream.
 
I mean it's not competitive or anything, they just check the stream hashtag and print out whatever people posted, plus this is the newest group without an anime and only a few small performances so far so there's even less people going hard on fanart, but still. Wild to see something I drew put up with the voice actresses.

18, aisle gives me legroom and there's a free space between me and the window seat woman so there's tons of room. Middle of the plane isn't too bad for boarding or leaving. Only issues are woman behind looks tall so may poke into back of my chair (understandable and forgiven) and small child across aisle will probably be loud (unforgivable, instant death technique administered).

I pick 16 with no knowledge of a single character on the chart, crazy meta position if 15 is actually vacant

So I finally beat Tunic.  Was delayed by a few things, including work and the second half of the game being harder to power through than the first.  One of the big reasons was that for some reason about halfway through the game it kept demanding more and more CPU, the point where eventually my CPU temp would go to 95C almost instantly upon starting the game, so I had to spend a while fiddling to figure out what was going on.  Eventually I realized that it was trying to force the FPS through the roof for some reason, and when limiting it to 60 FPS everything ran fine even with high graphics settings.
 
Anyway, I stayed pretty true to my promise at not looking anything up.  There were two fairy puzzles that I looked up hints on, and both times it was more to verify that I had everything I needed than to get the solution.  I don't know whether it's even worth putting things in spoilers since half the forum's apparently beat the game anyway, but
 
Everything else was done solely by me, including everything about unlocking the door at the mountain.  I'm not claiming to be a genius or anything; for the last half of the game most of my sessions were playing for 30-60 minutes and only getting through one or two puzzles.  There's still a few things I don't know what they mean in the manual, so I haven't solved everything.
 
 
Overall I liked the game and I liked the puzzles.  I did basically all my notes on paper, with frequent scouring of the in-game manual for secrets.  It was always a joy to discover that I missed something that had been there the whole time, and the process did remind me of the process of looking for secrets in a Super Nintendo game while only having some hastily copied notes from a friend's Nintendo Power or later from some random online fansite.  This further makes me think that the point of the game was to capture the vibe of the 8-bit and 16-bit era without attempting to make it look or even necessarily play like a game from that era, and on that level I think it succeeded wonderfully.
 
On the other hand, I can easily see people hating this game.  Even before you get to the midgame swing, the game can be pretty impenetrable.  There are parts of the game that I got passed without even being sure that I had the intended solution
 
 
Once you get past the swap you are firmly in a puzzle game where the clues are there, but you really have to pay attention to see them and learn what you need to do from them.  And even if you are paying attention, you will almost certainly try the wrong thing first a few times, and will miss key information entirely for a while.  If you want to do this blind, like I did, it will mean running into a brick wall quite often.  I'm perfectly fine with that; I've played too many 90's adventure games to not have experienced that before.  But I can easily see someone experiencing that constant frustration, look something online and then say "it's totally unfair that the game would expect you to do this!  The game practically requires a walkthrough!"
 
There are a few complaints I would have, aside from the mysterious technical issue.  Most seriously, I think the midway switch is a bit too much.  Without getting into spoilers much, the combat portion of the game drops out entirely,
and additionally, portions of the game get blocked off without the opportunity to ever revisit them.  While I appreciate the obstacles this creates and the change in tone, I do wish that there was something like the mirror in Zelda 3 or ability to use the Temple of Time to return to the past in Zelda 5 so that you could reexperience the old overworld without needing to start a new game.
 
Some of the puzzles are a bit frustrating in that they require a lot of inputs with no feedback until the very last step. 
 
 
So it is entirely possible that you will screw up even though you have the solution.  Or that you will have one very tiny part wrong on an extended puzzle, and never realize that you were close.  This definitely happened to me at the Door on the Mountain puzzle
 
 
Another thing that can be frustrating about the game is that it can be hard to determine how essential any puzzle is.  I got a bunch of trophies while trying to collect fairies for the last puzzle sequence, and each time I thought I was doing something that could be required.  At one point I was actually attempting to decipher the fake language used in the manual.  I am sure that this can be done, and I have an idea on where to get started, but I eventually got to the point where I thought "there's no way that they'd require you to do this for anything but an ultra secret achievement."  And I was right.  But I can see someone starting to do that, get convinced that it is required, and give up in frustration
 
 
Honestly I don't know how they could better communicate "this is necessary to beat the game" vs. "this is necessary to beat the game with the better ending" vs. "this is only something for die hard fans", especially not without ruining the mystery vibe that I liked in the first place.  But again I can see this frustrating people far more than it did me.
 
So I guess what I'm saying is that this game is targeting a very specific niche, despite looking like something accessible for everyone.  Roughly Zelda fans who like how games felt in the 8 and 16 bit era but don't care if the graphics look the same, and who are willing to go through some crazy puzzles with very little hints, and who like a vibe that communicates things through atmospheric detail without giving you explicit answers in any easily accessible way.  Liking foxes might also help.  A very tiny niche, but I'm squarely in the middle of it, so I don't regret putting it as game of the year.
 
Now that I get to the end, I kind of wonder if rather than saying "if you liked Zelda 1-6, you'll love this game" it would be more accurate to say "if you liked Riven, you'll like this game."  The music even has more similarities to the soundtrack to Riven than to the Zelda series.

So I finally beat Tunic.  Was delayed by a few things, including work and the second half of the game being harder to power through than the first.  One of the big reasons was that for some reason about halfway through the game it kept demanding more and more CPU, the point where eventually my CPU temp would go to 95C almost instantly upon starting the game, so I had to spend a while fiddling to figure out what was going on.  Eventually I realized that it was trying to force the FPS through the roof for some reason, and when limiting it to 60 FPS everything ran fine even with high graphics settings.
 
Anyway, I stayed pretty true to my promise at not looking anything up.  There were two fairy puzzles that I looked up hints on, and both times it was more to verify that I had everything I needed than to get the solution.  I don't know whether it's even worth putting things in spoilers since half the forum's apparently beat the game anyway, but
 
Everything else was done solely by me, including everything about unlocking the door at the mountain.  I'm not claiming to be a genius or anything; for the last half of the game most of my sessions were playing for 30-60 minutes and only getting through one or two puzzles.  There's still a few things I don't know what they mean in the manual, so I haven't solved everything.
 
 
Overall I liked the game and I liked the puzzles.  I did basically all my notes on paper, with frequent scouring of the in-game manual for secrets.  It was always a joy to discover that I missed something that had been there the whole time, and the process did remind me of the process of looking for secrets in a Super Nintendo game while only having some hastily copied notes from a friend's Nintendo Power or later from some random online fansite.  This further makes me think that the point of the game was to capture the vibe of the 8-bit and 16-bit era without attempting to make it look or even necessarily play like a game from that era, and on that level I think it succeeded wonderfully.
 
On the other hand, I can easily see people hating this game.  Even before you get to the midgame swing, the game can be pretty impenetrable.  There are parts of the game that I got passed without even being sure that I had the intended solution
 
 
Once you get past the swap you are firmly in a puzzle game where the clues are there, but you really have to pay attention to see them and learn what you need to do from them.  And even if you are paying attention, you will almost certainly try the wrong thing first a few times, and will miss key information entirely for a while.  If you want to do this blind, like I did, it will mean running into a brick wall quite often.  I'm perfectly fine with that; I've played too many 90's adventure games to not have experienced that before.  But I can easily see someone experiencing that constant frustration, look something online and then say "it's totally unfair that the game would expect you to do this!  The game practically requires a walkthrough!"
 
There are a few complaints I would have, aside from the mysterious technical issue.  Most seriously, I think the midway switch is a bit too much.  Without getting into spoilers much, the combat portion of the game drops out entirely,
and additionally, portions of the game get blocked off without the opportunity to ever revisit them.  While I appreciate the obstacles this creates and the change in tone, I do wish that there was something like the mirror in Zelda 3 or ability to use the Temple of Time to return to the past in Zelda 5 so that you could reexperience the old overworld without needing to start a new game.
 
Some of the puzzles are a bit frustrating in that they require a lot of inputs with no feedback until the very last step. 
 
 
So it is entirely possible that you will screw up even though you have the solution.  Or that you will have one very tiny part wrong on an extended puzzle, and never realize that you were close.  This definitely happened to me at the Door on the Mountain puzzle
 
 
Another thing that can be frustrating about the game is that it can be hard to determine how essential any puzzle is.  I got a bunch of trophies while trying to collect fairies for the last puzzle sequence, and each time I thought I was doing something that could be required.  At one point I was actually attempting to decipher the fake language used in the manual.  I am sure that this can be done, and I have an idea on where to get started, but I eventually got to the point where I thought "there's no way that they'd require you to do this for anything but an ultra secret achievement."  And I was right.  But I can see someone starting to do that, get convinced that it is required, and give up in frustration
 
 
Honestly I don't know how they could better communicate "this is necessary to beat the game" vs. "this is necessary to beat the game with the better ending" vs. "this is only something for die hard fans", especially not without ruining the mystery vibe that I liked in the first place.  But again I can see this frustrating people far more than it did me.
 
So I guess what I'm saying is that this game is targeting a very specific niche, despite looking like something accessible for everyone.  Roughly Zelda fans who like how games felt in the 8 and 16 bit era but don't care if the graphics look the same, and who are willing to go through some crazy puzzles with very little hints, and who like a vibe that communicates things through atmospheric detail without giving you explicit answers in any easily accessible way.  Liking foxes might also help.  A very tiny niche, but I'm squarely in the middle of it, so I don't regret putting it as game of the year.
 
Now that I get to the end, I kind of wonder if rather than saying "if you liked Zelda 1-6, you'll love this game" it would be more accurate to say "if you liked Riven, you'll like this game."  The music even has more similarities to the soundtrack to Riven than to the Zelda series.

So I finally beat Tunic.  Was delayed by a few things, including work and the second half of the game being harder to power through than the first.  One of the big reasons was that for some reason about halfway through the game it kept demanding more and more CPU, the point where eventually my CPU temp would go to 95C almost instantly upon starting the game, so I had to spend a while fiddling to figure out what was going on.  Eventually I realized that it was trying to force the FPS through the roof for some reason, and when limiting it to 60 FPS everything ran fine even with high graphics settings.
 
Anyway, I stayed pretty true to my promise at not looking anything up.  There were two fairy puzzles that I looked up hints on, and both times it was more to verify that I had everything I needed than to get the solution.  I don't know whether it's even worth putting things in spoilers since half the forum's apparently beat the game anyway, but
 
Everything else was done solely by me, including everything about unlocking the door at the mountain.  I'm not claiming to be a genius or anything; for the last half of the game most of my sessions were playing for 30-60 minutes and only getting through one or two puzzles.  There's still a few things I don't know what they mean in the manual, so I haven't solved everything.
 
 
Overall I liked the game and I liked the puzzles.  I did basically all my notes on paper, with frequent scouring of the in-game manual for secrets.  It was always a joy to discover that I missed something that had been there the whole time, and the process did remind me of the process of looking for secrets in a Super Nintendo game while only having some hastily copied notes from a friend's Nintendo Power or later from some random online fansite.  This further makes me think that the point of the game was to capture the vibe of the 8-bit and 16-bit era without attempting to make it look or even necessarily play like a game from that era, and on that level I think it succeeded wonderfully.
 
On the other hand, I can easily see people hating this game.  Even before you get to the midgame swing, the game can be pretty impenetrable.  There are parts of the game that I got passed without even being sure that I had the intended solution
 
 
Once you get past the swap you are firmly in a puzzle game where the clues are there, but you really have to pay attention to see them and learn what you need to do from them.  And even if you are paying attention, you will almost certainly try the wrong thing first a few times, and will miss key information entirely for a while.  If you want to do this blind, like I did, it will mean running into a brick wall quite often.  I'm perfectly fine with that; I've played too many 90's adventure games to not have experienced that before.  But I can easily see someone experiencing that constant frustration, look something online and then say "it's totally unfair that the game would expect you to do this!  The game practically requires a walkthrough!"
 
There are a few complaints I would have, aside from the mysterious technical issue.  Most seriously, I think the midway switch is a bit too much.  Without getting into spoilers much, the combat portion of the game drops out entirely,
and additionally, portions of the game get blocked off without the opportunity to ever revisit them.  While I appreciate the obstacles this creates and the change in tone, I do wish that there was something like the mirror in Zelda 3 or ability to use the Temple of Time to return to the past in Zelda 5 so that you could reexperience the old overworld without needing to start a new game.
 
Some of the puzzles are a bit frustrating in that they require a lot of inputs with no feedback until the very last step. 
 
 
So it is entirely possible that you will screw up even though you have the solution.  Or that you will have one very tiny part wrong on an extended puzzle, and never realize that you were close.  This definitely happened to me at the Door on the Mountain puzzle
 
 
Another thing that can be frustrating about the game is that it can be hard to determine how essential any puzzle is.  I got a bunch of trophies while trying to collect fairies for the last puzzle sequence, and each time I thought I was doing something that could be required.  At one point I was actually attempting to decipher the fake language used in the manual.  I am sure that this can be done, and I have an idea on where to get started, but I eventually got to the point where I thought "there's no way that they'd require you to do this for anything but an ultra secret achievement."  And I was right.  But I can see someone starting to do that, get convinced that it is required, and give up in frustration
 
 
Honestly I don't know how they could better communicate "this is necessary to beat the game" vs. "this is necessary to beat the game with the better ending" vs. "this is only something for die hard fans", especially not without ruining the mystery vibe that I liked in the first place.  But again I can see this frustrating people far more than it did me.
 
So I guess what I'm saying is that this game is targeting a very specific niche, despite looking like something accessible for everyone.  Roughly Zelda fans who like how games felt in the 8 and 16 bit era but don't care if the graphics look the same, and who are willing to go through some crazy puzzles with very little hints, and who like a vibe that communicates things through atmospheric detail without giving you explicit answers in any easily accessible way.  Liking foxes might also help.  A very tiny niche, but I'm squarely in the middle of it, so I don't regret putting it as game of the year.
 
Now that I get to the end, I kind of wonder if rather than saying "if you liked Zelda 1-6, you'll love this game" it would be more accurate to say "if you liked Riven, you'll like this game."  The music even has more similarities to the soundtrack to Riven than to the Zelda series.

https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/115539491

All I remember from my last dream is that it was a whodunnit mystery with several fake outs where someone "solved" the case but where the solution was immediately shown to be bullshit.
 
Then the lead detective said "finally, I have all the information necessary to explain what really happened.  Unlike the previous explanations, I can prove each point definitively, so that there will be no doubt in your mind that my explanation is correct.  You see..."
 
Then my alarm went off in real life and I woke up.
 
At this point I can't remember anything about what the mystery was though, so maybe it's for the best that I never got the solution.

Had a dream about a first episode of an anime. Vampires living in a secluded manor were being attacked by some kind of unknown force/assailant (stylized like these shadow figures in long cloaks that had crazy long bladed weapons, kind of ambiguous if they were normal people, supernatural creatures, or something else entirely) and the main character was trying to figure out what was behind it. Found a human girl wandering the gardens of the manor as the cliffhanger for the next episode.
 
What was funny is the MC was a boy who must have been turned at a younger age, and he was totally a genderbent mashup of Neru from Blue Archive and Mao from Gakuen Idolmaster. So a vampire mashup of two of my favorite characters, that's like triple corvbait.
 
You can see an artist's hastily sketched rendition below:
 

Dishonorable Mention
 
 
Honorable Mentions
 
 
The Top Ten
 
 
Other games I play a lot but which I played in previous years:
 
 

It's that time of the year again! I am not gonna forget this time!!!!!!!
 
Big AotY chart image:
 
Explanations/Words/Damn Bitch I Ain't Readin All That (just skip to the music part theres good shit in there for once):
 
2025 Winter

 
2025 Spring:
 
 
2025 Summer:
 
 
2025 Fall:
 
MC of the Year:
 
Girl of the year:
 
Music of the Year oh god these youtube embeds make this part big but it's preferable to ugly links:
 
Last few parts:
 
Overall, 2025 was pretty great for anime. I honestly am surprised I watched as much as I did (there were some ones here I sort of watched a bit but had literally nothing to say about them so they're not on here) and I really feel like Winter 2026 is weak in comparison already. Here's to another year! :DDD

Alright, uh, lets see my list here... (Huh? No, I wasn't writing my thoughts through the entire year, shut up.)
 
Tried to make a dent on my backlog, even with Humble Choice filling it more and more each month. I tried to finish all I played, but some I decided to stop midway for several reasons.
College wasn't that bad the first semester, so I had time to play stuff, and I only started working in the last two months of the year.
Also decided to pirate some games, either because of lack of money, lack of interest, or lack of wanting to give money to the dev.
Marked pirate games with (P).
 
THE GOOD:
 
THE EHHHH...:
 
THE DOGSHIT:
 
THE ADULT STORE, ONLY CLICK IF YOU ARE ABOVE 18:
 
For my GOTY, I think CrossCode was my favorite, followed by Arum's, BALLxPIT and Tiny Terry's. Deltarune was cool, but its only halfway done. Probably will be my GOTY 2028/2029.
 
And what do I have in store for this next year? Let's say I have a few ideas up my sleeve.
"Like what?"
I'd rather not get into it right now.
"Why not?"
Alright, I don't have any ideas for the future. I got nothing. Happy?
 
 

Ok, big year. For other people. Like Silent said above and the rest of you have demonstrated, 2025 was pretty insane for games. I think Clair Obscur was the only videogame released, though maybe. The issue is that I didn't have any time to play any games!!! I got hit with multiple underways and got multiple final middle fingers from the Navy in the form of going underway LITERALLY until my separation date, loads of time spent doing dumbass maintenance, and other stuff. So I just couldn't play many games! I'm hoping that 2026 rectifies that. My backlog is huge. My goals are mostly to play a few PC games I didn't have time for, but also to dive into the GCN and SNES libraries. Maybe some PS2 as well.
 
I can not be poetic during these because I have been so fucking mad over the last few years. But maybe I can dredge up the tiny little wavering bit of optimism and hope I have left and use it to play some fucking VIDEO GAMES.

Backloggd
You don't get my Steam Replay because I just played a lot of Overwatch.
 
Honorable Mentions
 
The Top Ten
 
The Bad
 
Awards
 
Music
 
Backlog/Frontlog
 

Hmm, what did I play this year...

uhhhhhhhhhh yeah pretty much the same as every year
 
I guess I played the second half of Ghost Trick, and that was pretty awesome. I already talked about it in January though. I've also been playing through the Ace Attorney trilogy which is also pretty cool. I've come around on Pulsar: Lost Colony after really not liking it at first when my friend asked me to buy it for his birthday to play with him but I don't know if it something I'd recommend. Risk of Rain Returns sure is risk of rain 1, bogus-feeling difficulty and everything. I haven't completed Sonic x Shadow Generations yet but I plan to once I get the new Steam Controller. It's cool but I really never liked boost sonic gameplay. ENA Dream BBQ was cool to get that itch of wanting to play Temptation Stairway but I haven't done a second runthrough yet. I've watched so much Balatro and Nubby's Number Factory gameplay this year and those have also been similarly awesome, but I gotta agree with Corv that Nubbys really lacks a ton of depth/skill that Balatro has making it much less replayable.
 
I guess my favorite game of the year I've played has got to be Deadlock (aaaaaaaaa a moba) but the reasons why are too complicated to really discuss. I quit it last year in November and started coming back to it around March of 2025 and haven't stopped playing since. I think way too many people that hate-play the game are trying way too hard to want to like it just because its a Valve game (they've still got it with the writing and worldbuilding), or they're just not used to playing a game where there's such high highs and low lows. They've even did some really touching surprise events for Christmas and New Years, with a bunch of new heroes (allegedly) coming in January. I wonder how well this game will do if/when it gets more casual game modes.

Happy New Year to everyone who still sometimes checks in here! 2025 was a wild year for me and 2026 seems like it will be wild too

Dishonorable Mention
 
 
Honorable Mentions
 
 
The Top Ten
 
 
Other games I play a lot but which I played in previous years:
 
 

EDIT: I did throw together a crappy but technically functioning level in a few minutes to test the feature:
 

 
(Note that there's so little testing that you could jut remove "stop" from "tree is" to win the level that way.)
 
I thought I already had reviewed the game, but I guess I only reviewed the solitaire spinoffs that appeared in A Solitaire Mystery.
 
Anyway, this is one of those games that knows what it is doing and does it very well.  The premise is very simple: the rules of the puzzle are plainly stated in the level itself, and in very early stages you just have "normal" puzzles where you need to get to an end goal with maybe needing to push some blocks to get over water, like in Sokoban or Chip's Challenge or something.  But since the text is actually in the level you can move it around, and this quickly leads to very weird solutions like changing yourself from being Baba the sheep to all the walls in the level, making it so that objects no longer collide with you, changing what the victory condition is, etc.
 
The game revels in allowing you (and later requiring you) to do things that you would never think to do.  Early on this is just through realizing things like "do I really need to have the flag be the victory condition?" or "hey wait a minute, there's not actually a rule saying that I can't walk through walls."  You will quickly get used to this new state of affairs, but the game ends up being more complicated than even that thanks to things like (I wouldn't read these spoilers if you haven't played):
 
 
The biggest upside of this game is how much content there is, especially with updates.  Yeah, they just added foxes, but that's really not the most interesting thing since "nouns" in this game are pretty much interchangeable, with all game logic being determined by the text rules.  You could have a fox act as literally any object in the game.  When playing around with it to check the new update, I did see the 3D mode that they added in a puzzle pack, which kind of blows my mind even after all this time.
 
The biggest downside of this game is how much content there is, especially with how obtuse things naturally are.  Very few people will 100% this game without walkthroughs.  I'm pretty far into the game, having solved the vast majority of the puzzles on the "main" overworld and discovered several levels "beneath" it, but there's still a lot that I haven't completed and that's not getting into the extra levels.  I'm fine with that, just like I'm fine with not being able to 1cc every danmaku I own (or hell, even being able to beat some of them.)  If I enjoy what I'm doing and get far enough into the game for it to be worth it, that's all I want.  But I know that some people get annoyed at not having a game "finished."