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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
You are a synthesis review, a more-or-less rectangular blob of text, February 4, 2025
Related reviews: 2024 IFDB Awards

You are a familiar - a homunculus, a little man in the bottle - except you're not gendered, not at all human, and definitely not in a bottle. You've just been created, and aware of your own existence. But you are alone, and your creator is nowhere to be seen. Luckily, you have a special ability - to synthesize yourself with every other familiar you come across to take THEIR special abilities. Your goal? Escape the facility you were born in and take vengeance on your indifferent master!

Familiar Problems is a great little game that positively vibrates (RESONATES, even) with personality, every detail of the world it is set in placed there with purpose and care. Once the mechanics of your powers are worked out, the way you use them to solve the various puzzles in the facility becomes clear, though it may take a little while. There is a helpful ASCII map at the top to aid with navigation but, uh, I kind of only noticed it about two-thirds of the way through, haha.

This ticked all of my boxes, and I will definitely check out the other Stelzer works in time. My only real complaint is the length, and I hope there's a sequel or two in the pipeline, because this mechanic has legs (spindly compass ones, of course). Five blobs of bluish-green fluid out of five.

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