Moondrop Isle

This is a big sprawling puzzly game built with a web interface that stitches together nine separately-written games to share inventory between them. It's an interesting idea, but as with many first takes on a new idea, it's more notable for the technical gimmick than being a stellar-quality game.

The biggest issue for me is the pacing: you know how in a metroidvania there's that early/mid-game rush of finding new abilities that unlock new areas and secrets ...and then they always peter out with that tedious end-game hunting around for those last lousy points and do you even care enough to scour the map for every last thing that you missed, and did you take good enough notes the first time around?

This game starts with that. There is a big multi-part map, there are a lot of items, and it feels like the progression gating is relatively stingy so you have to find the right one (or right few ones) first. So it took several hours of wandering around mapping before I felt like I was getting anywhere, and even then... I don't know if I care. A lot of the ideas are creative ((Spoiler - click to show)there's a metal detector; a pair of waders; I haven't found it yet, but it's strongly suggested that there's a viewing device for autostereogram posters) but a lot of the time it feels like they were invented as an excuse to link the various parts of the game or limit progression rather than because they were necessary for any story purposes or were a cool mechanic in themselves?

I don't know. The overall design feels very slapdash and "(slaps roof) look how many wacky ideas we can fit in this bad boy" rather than a thoughtful design process of "how will this feel to the player? Does adding this really improve the feel?"

And there's not a lot of story. Again, it's wacky bits and pieces and the narrative is super-spotty here. I'm four or five hours in and I still have no idea who I am or why I'm here or what I'm trying to do, other than wander around looking at silly stuff and solving puzzles because they're here. What's so important that I was reckless enough to take a kayak across the ocean at night to explore this island? Why am I such a feckless idiot that I didn't bring any supplies or even a light source? (that's one that really REALLY feels like "nobody thought about this AT ALL; they just needed a way to gate off some areas until you found an item. And it's super inconsistent and nonsensical; sometimes you can read things by the light of (Spoiler - click to show)the jellyfish in an inlet and sometimes you can apparently see fine in some (Spoiler - click to show)underground tunnels with no explanation. I don't get it. Don't ask questions, just play along).

So if you're looking for a sprawling world with lots of puzzles connecting the bits, if you like making maps and taking notes so you can find that one weird spot again later, if you like realizing that "oh, now I can make progress over here," this is probably right up your alley.

If you need a reason for solving puzzles other than "they exist: of course you want to solve them" or a story motivating the thing (that's not just shallow facile "what wacky random things can we shove in here?") or something where you always have a puzzle to make progress on instead of mostly wandering the map looking for one of the few places where you can make progress... don't waste your time. I've poked around 7 of 9 of the regions and I wouldn't say this is any of those authors' best work.