This is Interesting

Bought this game when it came out because I know the developer as a streamer and I wanted to support them, just now got around to actually playing. I had been following the development with some interest, and it was kinda fun going through and seeing a room and recognizing it from the demos the developer would show sometimes, back when this was going to be a very different game. This was a short game, but genuinely enjoyable. I liked how the puzzles twisted how you thought about things at times both micro and macro. The ambiguity of the situation you're in never fully resolving kept the overall feel intact even at the very end. Its atmosphere was genuinely unsettling at first (though I am admittedly very much not great at stomaching horror) but settled into an almost familiar routine by the end. There are no jumpscares beyond flashing green text (and I'm willing to admit those did make me jump a couple times) and instead go for atmosphere and music to bring the mood to where they want you to be. The gameplay loop is somewhat repetitive by design, but the length of the game stops it from truly feeling like a chore which I think was a great decision to pair the mechanics with the length chosen. I did wind up needing to get to the "obvious" hint that was apparently added later, but that was mostly down to me not changing what order I did things for a while - had I started doing things in a more functional order sooner, I don't think I would've needed that - as is, I didn't learn anything I didn't already know by the time I unlocked the obvious hint, and it was just the exact numbers needed for the last thing that I didn't have, so I do think the game is good at making things clearer over time both in-universe and through the hints. I do think the ambiguity can hurt things at times though, especially in the beginning. I completely missed [spoiler]the guy that gave riddles[/spoiler] until his last dialogue before repeating, for example, because I was under the impression for a while that you [spoiler]weren't supposed to touch or interact with them, they felt like "avoid at all costs" NPCs.[/spoiler] The fact that this assumption was correct for other NPCs did not help me decide to try NOT doing that for a while. It's also a (literally) dark game - while I get the tone it was going for, there were times navigation was difficult until I memorized rooms (and I'm not even talking about Hide and Seek here). Finally, the fact that some events are tied to which exact loop you're on means you can and likely will miss things that will never occur again. I did not ever get the person in the "find the notebook" trial that is only there once because I tried something else in a different trial first that ended that run. I only know it happens because I went back for the one achievement I missed. It didn't stop me from enjoying the game or getting to the end, but it did cast things in a different light that I wouldn't have seen otherwise. That being said I had fun and do think I got my money's worth out of it. If you're looking for a short game that's almost more interested in making you think than making you play a game, I can absolutely recommend this one.