Cirno! Lifts a Boulder

Life changing 3 hours

Not a touhou fan (by virtue of the fact that I've just never actually played a game in that series) but I had a lot of fun with this. It's a somewhat short (my first playthrough got all the Items in just under 2 hours) collectathon platformer with a decently large "open zone" map with a surprising amount of verticality to it and many interesting locales that allow each are to be memorable, keeping the lack of a map function in game from being a problem as you'll have no trouble navigating it by memory. Initially the slightly stiff controls were a bother, but the upgrades you unlock (such as a floating ability that allows you to change your trajectory in the air making the rare tight jumps easier to manage, or an ability to create ice platforms that can act as a "Lite Double Jump" in a pinch and makes it much easier to scale the vertical areas) end up making it not such a big deal in the end and it feels very fun to use the abilities together to easily traverse large parts of the map at once, which also lends a good sense of progression that keeps you playing and preventing getting stuck. Even if you do get stuck, the default settings enable an orb that will guide you in the general direction of whatever Items you still need to/can find after a while of not collecting any, so you won't have to be stuck for long; if you do want to do it fully on your own, you can of course just disable that setting in the "Gameplay" tab in the options menu. I found the art of the game (particularly the opening/ending comic "animatics") to be very cute and really set the stage for the type of lighthearted, slightly silly cartoony experience really well. The graphics in game are quite appealing as well, taking on a simple but well detailed low-poly aesthetic with a good amount of squash-and-stretch for Cirno's animations that make it just fun to play and also to watch her SPLAT when falling from large heights but there's no health system in this game so she's not even remotely affected, I thought that was fun :) One can't forget the soundtrack, which is a pleasant selection of different calm tracks that fit the vibe of a snowy area and "at your own pace" gameplay, though I found that it didn't take long to hear all the songs and the repetition did become noticeable for sure. It didn't really have a negative affect on my experience, but it certainly wouldn't have hurt to maybe have one more track it could cycle through. As for my more critical thoughts, I will say that I found that the range to hear the audio cues for the Hidden Frogs was at times not large enough to actually tell where the frogs were which becomes a problem when you've found most of them and the remaining ones are spread far enough apart that you can start to easily just run right past them without realizing because you weren't close enough to let the cues be audible. Additionally, even when you are in range the directional audio doesn't always make it apparent where in correlation to you the frog actually is, which gets really annoying if you happen to be standing directly above one but can't see it anywhere around you (even going underneath whatever ground you're on isn't a guarantee to help because 1) the frogs tend to blend in with their surroundings and 2) the directional audio doesn't change enough to give you an idea of if you're doing the right thing) which I just felt like either the frogs should have been able to be heard from farther, their sound cues could have gotten louder than they currently do when you're close or the sound cue could have repeated more frequently. I also thought that there could have been more to the game; it's good that it doesn't overstay it's welcome, but once I had beaten it I felt like there could have and maybe should have been more, like another full level or something. There could be secrets I didn't find that would give me more to do (I did spot a UFO flying around at times, but I wasn't able to catch up to it...) but that wouldn't really satisfy the same desire. I suppose that's something to be left for a potential future update/DLC, if the dev wants to add more outright content to the game. All in all, if my two main complaints are "the hidden collectables are a little too hidden" and "I wanted there to be more to the game" I would say this game hasn't done much wrong at all. While it is a little pricey for the amount of gameplay present, I didn't regret my purchase one bit so I can say if you're interested it's worth giving a shot even at full price (and on sale it's even more worth it.)