REPOSE

This is a difficult game to judge. If played as originally conceived, it can easily become more frustrating than fun if you can't apply the necessary patience to it, and even so, it's heavily dependent on trial and error. The "Exploration" mode, added some months after release, is laudable for how it makes the game more accessible, but at the same time it can easily trivialize most of it. I can't ignore how facing enemies sometimes requires reflexes in a way that clashes with the more meditative, planning pace of the rest, and how pop-up messages at the bottom of the screen annoyingly cover the compass in a game where orientation is extremely important to optimize your movements. But most of all, you must avoid the misconception that this is a dungeon crawler - even if we called it that, it's very bare-bones, with no stats to speak of, no inventory, just a few readily selectable items (a lightstick, an axe, and later a gun), and bottles of tea to recharge your movement points, the only resource you must care about. Each step consumes one; later, firing a gun consumes a whole five points, and sometimes you won't be able to avoid walking into anomalies that accelerate energy consumption. As the chances to recharge are very rare - unless you play in Exploration mode, which gives infinite tea - the game is more of a strategic puzzle, as you must learn the layout of your path, all the dangers along it, open up shortcuts, and plan a "perfect" route to ultimately reach the following level. There are maps, but your position on them is shown only if you drink tea, and they aren't available for all areas. It definitely looks like it encourages drawing maps on paper and taking notes; see also the password system, even if the latest pass found is shown if an option is on. While the game is quite short, it's reasonable to think that playing in its original mode takes some time. The Summer 2025 update has also added a large extra area (the password is found in the main final area) with a new type of enemy, fortunately very easy to dispatch, while another gets a variant that requires quick switching of weapons. Given the great visual style, with that striking monochrome pixel art and many nice animations, I hoped for the game to be "richer". What there is, however, is an interesting experiment that is hard to classify: for some it may be an issue, for others one of the strong points of [b]REPOSE[/b]. It also has great atmosphere on its side. The low price aligns with the duration and even in the facilitated mode, it's worth exploring those strange and eerie facilities at least once. Would be great if the developer were given the means to embark on a bigger project.