Woodlings draw near!

Wrapping up the last few extra credit entries from IFComp 2021, after already having hit the "anyone can be a judge but play and score at least five of them" threshold. Which is fortunate, because I actually don't think we're going to score this one. I mean, we played it, and we're writing this review right now, but I just don't think there's enough here to qualify as an IntFic game.

My Gender Is a Fish by Carter Gwertzman is a short Twine narrative. You ventured into some kind of fey forest and the magpies stole your gender identity. Now you must construct a new one. As you walk through the woods, you go through a few rounds of seeing one of two sights to choose between, both of which invite some gender-related musings. (Is your gender an eagle, flashy and majestic but performative, or a fish, quiet and plain but practical?) After a few rounds of such choices, the story concludes.

It's a neat narrative. It has some intriguing and well-written thoughts. It's worth experiencing. I like it and I'm glad we played it. Alas, it's short, not really interactive, and we just don't consider it enough of a game to qualify for IFComp. Rather than bringing out the dreaded 1 rating for something we actually liked, I think we're just going to pretend we officially never played this and just not submit a score.

Unofficially, though? It's good. It took me longer to write this than it will take you to play it, and the writing is pretty, so like... why not, right? It's a little after-dinner mint of a "game" but it's nice. It's neat.

IFComp 2021 continues.

Weird Grief by Bez is a side story, a companion piece meant to be played alongside The Dead Account (which we covered previously.) Rather than playing from the perspective of a Hivekind messenger employee investigating the case of Mike Stanvinci through flagged messages and profiles and group chatroom interfaces, Weird Grief assumes the role of one of Mike's partners and is a presented as a much more standard narrative that doesn't try to dress itself up as anything fancy.

We are... conflicted. On one hand, there are enough "choose what you say in response to this conversation" choices that it technically qualifies for the competition, I guess, but never before have I looked at an IFComp game and even considered bringing out the dreaded 1 score. (We take their guidelines very seriously and try to follow them, and per those guidelines, 1s are for entries that shouldn't even be in this competition because they're not IF.) I don't think we're going to do it, though; there are enough "choices" here to get in on a technicality. Still, we cannot in good conscience call this a "game" so much as a long textual story with a couple variations of certain scenes.

On the other hand, I have played IFComp games I absolutely hated and the lowest score we've given a game to date--the score we gave what we currently consider the worst IFComp game we have ever played--was a 3. And--and this is the important thing--we actually like Weird Grief. A lot. It's barely interactive as a story, but it's a good story. It touches on some deep themes. It has a sense of authenticity to it that makes it a refreshing departure from your typical "Hollywood Heartbreak" narratives.

It is incredibly pornographic. (We're used to adult content warnings in IF games because people swear a lot and maybe mention sex or imply it in a sort of fade-to-black way, but this has multiple sex scenes with the kind of intense focus one normally only sees in actual smut fics.) The pornography itself is used in a refreshingly honest way, as a seldom talked about part of the grieving process. This is an important lesson that not nearly enough people realize: brains are weird, and grief and shock take people to completely unpredictable places. Some people have breakdowns and sobbing fits, others go numb. Some feel angry or relieved or annoyed or heartbroken or all of the above, all at once. Some feel horny. There's a lot of awkward self-consciousness about this--"should I really be feeling this so soon after...? Does this make me a bad person?"--and I wish there wasn't, because that happens sometimes, not always but definitely sometimes (grief is an unpredictable beast.) It happened to me after my last breakup. Therefore, I know that this is an authentic reaction, the confusion over it is also an authentic reaction, and I wish we had more stories like this so that people experiencing feelings like this had more representation and more examples that could help them feel less alone, less like there's something wrong with them because this is where the complete chaotic RNG that is your brain in this whole process happened to land that day. I love that this story went there. I love that this story exists.

But is it an IFComp game?

I...

Look. The Dead Account is fantastic, probably our favorite one we've played so far this year as of this writing. Weird Grief is also fantastic, and it deserves to be here so that people can experience more of this story. Where one game goes, the other should follow. They're a matched set. One of them does a lot better job with the actual rules of IFComp submissions than the other, though. And so we may have to find ourselves downvoting a story we loved on sheer principle.

But I'm not going below a 3, because I refuse to let the current "lowest scored IFComp games we've ever played" entries off the hook, especially for something like this.

IFComp 2021 continues.

This Won't Make You Happy by Mike Gillis is a short Twine CYOA, representing IFComp's coveted "15 minutes or less" category that makes it so much easier for us to pad out our completion counter and get enough games down in time. You are sad, and on a quest to venture into the Caves of Despair to find the legendary Jewel of Happiness, in hopes that it will make you happy.

This game is heavily railroaded and its initial adventure through the caves is poorly written and handled, but both of those are. It gets meta after the relationship between the narrator and player breaks down, and credit where it's due; I so dearly wish I could have had "SHOUT: "WHAT? You made me kill him! That was the only option! This game is so annoying."" as a selectable option a couple years ago when we were playing The Milgram Parable.

All we can think of, though, is a screenshot from Jazztronauts that swordianmaster likes to use as a Telegram sticker, with one of its characters (The Pianist) angrily shouting, "MAKING JOKES ABOUT BEING THE PROBLEM DOESN'T MAKE YOU NOT THE PROBLEM." Furthermore, even giving us the option to choose the exact grievance over which to call out the narrator is only so satisfying when it's part of three "yell at the narrator about something" choices that all get railroaded into the next plot beat.

There is a tender moment near the end that encourages ways to find one's own happiness outside the game (breathe, call a friend...) before going back to the actual ending, which is... unsatisfying, but again, perhaps deliberately so. This game will not make you happy. Any happiness you get from it is fleeting like a Skinner box-like dopamine hit from the sound effect of a coin being collected before you finish playing, close the window, and go right back to where you were. The moment you have just before the ending does exactly what it promised it would do is nice, though, and is one of the more clever and positive-feeling ways a game can make us feel things in a meta way that lasts beyond its playtime; that maybe the thoughts we're thinking right now as we write this are still somehow part of the game experience. Look, after The Milgram Parable and Abandon Them in 2019, the bar for "kind of makes you think, doesn't it?" IntFic on our plate at this point is fairly low. This at least wasn't those. I don't regret playing this. We'll all just have to be happy with that, I suppose.

After, what, a three year wait? Toby Fox just dropped chapter 2 of Deltarune out of nowhere. We have other games we're playing at the moment, but of course when it's a Toby Fox project, you just know the entire Internet is going to be all over this including us so this one just couldn't wait. I'm delighted to have torn through it, because aaaaa once again this series continues to be amazing.

I swear that it's actually getting better now that Toby's been reaching out to form a game development team rather than doing almost everything by himself. For example, Undertale was incredible, from the writing to the music to the gameplay even to the detailed battle sprites and portraits, but if I had to find even the smallest fault anywhere in the experience, I think the overworld field sprites were... not quite up to the visual standards one sees in battles and portraits. By Deltarune chapter 2, I look at scenes like this and I swear that the field sprites are somehow the best part of the new visuals. Even within the smaller space constraint of the field sprite, Susie's facial expression is incredible and completely sells the mood of the scene.

The writing is top-notch as usual, brilliantly switching between hilarity and sincere pathos. If you enjoyed shipping any of the characters from Deltarune chapter 1, HAVE WE GOT A FOLLOWUP FOR YOU, since there are moments for almost everyone. The music... I mean, it's a Toby Fox game, of course the music is phenomenal.

This may in fact be our favorite offering in this series so far, which is nothing at all against Undertale or Deltarune Chapter 1 (there's a reason we were so quick to tear into this one when it dropped!) If anything, it speaks to just how well they've been able to raise the bar over the course of the series... which means the subsequent chapters are going to be beyond belief.

This one came because Nakana.io was having an "If you own any one of our games then all the rest are like 90% off" sale, and we did, so we added this one to the collection because it looked really weird and intriguing. And it was fantastic, which only solidifies Nakana as a good publisher in my eyes. This means that Nakana is now responsible for three of what I consider to be among our top games this year so far (after Journey of the Broken Circle--the one that qualified us for that sale--and Mythic Ocean.) They're very much threatening to overtake Mojiken Studio as my favorite "Oh, they published this one? Say no more, instantly wishlisted" publisher.

Infini is a puzzle game. It is also incredibly visually and musically weird in what we consider to be a very positive way. It's striking. I can't think of another game on the market that looks or sounds anything like this one. As far as the puzzle elements, though, everything essentially boils down to the following core elements:

• The goal of each level is to reach the exit (that silver ring, which is a portal.)
  
• Touching the shiny cubes = death.
  
• The screen always wraps around in all directions. Falling off the bottom will make you fall back in from the same position on the top. Moving off the right side of the screen will make you appear in the same spot on the left.
  
• What is currently visible on the screen is treated as the only elements that actually exist.

Exploiting the latter two mechanics to the hilt is the key to traversing most puzzles. For example: If the level exit is contained inside a solid square prison of cube walls with no actual way in, you can move to the right of that square and get the camera to follow you, then zoom way in, such that the right wall of the square is in the middle of the screen and is the only wall visible (the upper, lower, and left walls are out of frame.) Then you can go off the right side of the screen and reappear on the left, which, oh, hey, now you're inside the square where the exit is. Upper/lower/left walls? What upper/lower/left walls?

Honestly, the trailer is so incredibly demonstrative and well put together that just watching it tells you everything you need to know about how the gameplay works and about the visual and musical aesthetic presentation.

There are also twenty-six collectible Strange Symbols (each corresponding to a single letter of the alphabet) scattered throughout the levels and even in a lot of the chapter-opening and closing narrative walk-around bits. They're either a hidden secret or they're in plain sight but in a position where "how in the world do I get that and survive?" is an extra challenge, and so they serve as the majority of your completionism challenge. The Strange Symbol language is used exclusively both in a sort of secret side lore museum and by a major late-game character, but every individual letter you've collected is translated, kind of like FFX's Al Bhed Primer. Thus, building your collection turns the plot from "eldritch unknowable Cthulhu speak but I can vaguely infer that this is threatening somehow" to "oh now I know exactly what they're saying and that provides so much context."

There are also a few bonus levels here and there that are unlocked both with Strange Symbol collection and with having completed other levels. The bonus levels were hard enough that I almost needed a walkthrough, and I might well have caved but for the fact that this is a niche indie game and there are no bonus level walkthroughs. I eventually got them, and I felt like an absolute genius when I did. I give them a solid 8 the One to Qrostar scale of puzzle difficulty. (We can provide this one valuable piece of advice: If there's an asterisk under the individual level number when you're going back and looking at it in the level selection, that means there's still at least one more Strange Symbol to be found in that level somewhere.)

Narratively, the plot is... somewhat obtuse and allegorical at first, being presented largely out of order and starring a cast of concepts as characters like Time, Memory, Infinity, War, and so on. Things come a little into focus as the story progresses. The ending is... heavy, such that the first time we completed the game, I just assumed that that was the Bad Ending and that there would be a better one once we'd hundred-percented the Strange Symbols and bonus stages. There wasn't; there is but one ending, and the story really is just kind of like that. However, remember when I said that a major late-game character speaks in Strange Symbol language, and that there's an entire side lore museum thing that provides backstory explanations and such except that those are also in Strange Symbol language? Mechanically, nothing new happens when you go back and revisit all of those scenes again once you actually are able to understand them; the plot does not branch or change, everything still leads to the same single ending. Narratively, though, the knowledge gained from understanding both the backstory and the character monologues puts entire new English class-level layers of meaning into what's happening, and that ultimately made us a lot more satisfied with the ending.

So, yeah, this is a weird game in the best possible way. A+, do recommend if you like puzzles, artsiness, and/or litcrit allusions.

This is technically "complete" in that we have been through one cycle and seen an ending and credits. We are absolutely not done with this, though.

Mythic Ocean was one of the many entries on this year's Wholesome Direct, and was one of the major standouts for us. As the game begins, the world ends. You awake in an ocean with no memories, and your guide/mentor figure explains what's going on: A new world must be created, and one of the gods in this ocean must be the one to do it.

What unfolds from there can best be described as a mixture between a visual novel and an oceanic first-person exploration game like Endless Ocean or ABZU: you travel around each area talking to NPCs and looking for secret hidden collectibles, and when you find one of the actual gods, you converse, befriend, and influence them through your choices and actions. At the end of the game, one of the gods ascends and remakes the world in their image, and the player is treated to an epilogue based on both who the new creator is and what sort of lessons they learned from you during their time in the ocean. This makes every choice meaningful not just in the sense of befriending and smoothing things over with everyone, but also in their cosmic implications.

For example, the Twins are lonely and looking for someone to play with. Amar is a joyous and friendly and playful sort (almost to a fault for irresponsibility and Hakuna Matata reasons, which is another thing to consider and perhaps influence if you can) and would love to play with them, but there's a problem. Amar is... creative in his play, doing things like challenging the Twins to a race and then taking a secret shortcut to win, or controlling the direction of the game through Calvinball-esque recreating the rules on a whim. In the Twins' eyes, Amar is a dirty cheater and an all-around jerk. In Amar's eyes, the Twins are way too stuck up on the rules presented to them and need to think outside the box. Talking to the Twins, you can advise them either to tell Amar how they feel and ask him to please cut it out and play fair, or to get creative and beat Amar at his own game by cheating right back. How things unfold from here is a twofold question: One, how will this decision affect how each of them feel about you and about each other, and things like friendship levels that will ultimately effect who the new creator will be? Can you get them to improve their relations with each other and with you? And two, if either Amar or the Twins happen to be the ones to make the new world, what sort of lessons will they take from this when it comes time for them to shape and control their new society?

The characterization is outstanding, and each of the gods is incredibly endearing in their own ways. The way things unfold can get deeply emotional at parts. This is the second game we've ever played in which we had to do the "Star Billions Walk"--a term xyzzysqrl coined (after the first one to do it) for a game with a dilemma of a choice that makes you just... put the controller down and walk around the room and think about it for a while, because fuck. That's a testament to how strong a sense of connection this game can build between you and everyone in it, and how deeply it can make you care and worry about whether solving a crisis in this way might hurt that god or so forth.

In the end, we followed our heart and it... was a disaster, I'm not going to lie. I tried to influence things toward one particular god getting chosen but it ended up being another despite my efforts, and said other... really, really had not learned the right lessons to be in control of something like a new world, so the epilogue was generally full of horror and devastation. However, rather than being discouraged, this just makes me want to go back and try again. New Game Plus mode is essentially a baked-in part of the plot: It's directly stated that this cycle of destruction and recreation and memory wipes has been happening for ages and will continue to keep happening. The world that ended in the prologue of the second cycle is the world that was created in the epilogue of the first (and honestly, good riddance to that one; it... really did not turn out as planned.) Now we shall teach and interact with the gods all over again, and I will try to learn from my mistakes, to do better this time, both for their personal relationships and for the world one of them will create.

This game is beautiful, both in the sense of emotional meaning and heartfelt impact and in the sense of its lovely oceanic visuals and absolutely incredible soundtrack. It uses its presentation (you start out not knowing or remembering anything, only to be told not to worry about it because this "happens every time" and is "part of the arrangement") to create a sense of wonder and apprehension, a feeling of wanting to know what's behind the curtain but being afraid to ask about things you won't be able to un-see, things that might change your perception of everything. I can tell this is going to be one of those games that will invoke that "I wish we could play it again for the first time" feeling (you know the one,) to the point that I actually held back on learning more about the main character's past even when presented with the option because I want to preserve the mystery, at least for a little while longer. Maybe next cycle, or the one after. We'll see.

It also has a decently-sized free demo, so not only can I not say enough positive things about this game, but I can also push it on everyone we know. Seriously. This was and still is incredible. We will very happily continue the cycle, and you can more than likely look forward to seeing this one pop up a lot in our year-end awards.

This came from the Double Dragon and Kunio-Kun Retro Brawler Bundle, an absolutely massive Legacy Collection-like Switch title that includes, from what I can tell, literally every Double Dragon and Kunio-Kun franchise game made for the NES and Famicom (and the previously unreleased-in-North America Famicom games even have translations!) It's a fantastic collection, all told, but of course the first thing I had to do when we bought it was see if I could get through River City Ransom, a game with which younger me often struggled.

This is one of those games that I probably shouldn't have to explain because everyone knows it already, but just in case: You are Kunio and Riki Alex and Ryan, and the local high school students led by the evil Slick have kidnapped Riki/Ryan's girlfriend, formed the most colorful themed gangs since The Warriors, and are now out to take over all of River City. You beat up gangs, take the money they drop, use it to buy things that raise your stats, and follow the chain of "beating this boss sets the event flag that makes that boss spawn over there, and beating him unlocks this other boss" all the way until you're allowed into River City High School, at which point you beat up a few more bosses as you climb up its floors, and then beat up Slick in a final battle on the roof.

River City Ransom sure is a gang-fighting brawler, and despite the more chibi Kunio-kun style graphics, it fits right in alongside the Double Dragon games in the collection. However, RCR has more RPG elements to it (money, shops, stats that can be raised) and a more open map complete with backtracking rather than individual stages or levels. I adored this game as a child, but found it brutally hard. Young me remembers completely skipping the fight against the Dragon Twins in RC High 4th floor because I just could never beat them, even though that appears not to be possible given that even current world-record TAS speedrunners still have to stop and fight them. Tex, the boss of RC High 2nd floor, is optional, but the Dragon Twins aren't. I swear I remember beating the game but never being able to beat the Dragon Twins, though, somehow. Memories are weird, fallible things. The memory of calling the Nintendo Power hotline to get help on how to beat Turk is probably true, though. (They recommended spamming Acro Circus, which is... not... uh... see below.)

As an adult who has a better understanding of how stat grinding works and (thanks to several walkthroughs) what the stats actually do, I found the game's difficulty... unbalanced? Though it has RPG elements, at no point does RCR follow the mechanics of "becoming stronger turns once-overpowered enemies into a balanced and fair fight." Instead, high-level encounters appear to be contests of whether you or your opponent gets the "cheap you to death" strategy off first. There is no stat that does anything about how every enemy in the game, all the way down to the lowly minions in the Generic Dudes gang, hits like a truck and can combo you for half your health or more. (You'd think that'd be what Defense does, but that just increases your percent chance odds of blocking an opponent's attack when you hit the attack button at the same time.) At any point, in any room, this can happen. But so long as it doesn't happen, you are a death-dealing machine, completely ruthless and unstoppable (and cheap as hell) until someone hits you once. Every boss (including the Dragon Twins!) is all about spamming the attack that knocks them down, and hitting them with it again when they get back up to knock them down again, and just repeating and stun-locking them until they die.

In other words, this is one of those games where beating the game the actual normal legitimate developer-intended way feels like cheating, because there's just no balance whatsoever. The balance is that random gangs can do the same to you, I guess. I used to think that the Dragon Twins were the hardest fight in the game (even more so than Slick,) but I now understand the true challenge is any time you have to clear an entire room of gang members (either for grinding purposes or to make a boss appear after defeating all the minions.) Even the Generic Dudes. The bosses, though? They're are all laughable once you knock them down once. The Dragon Twins can be a little tricky since there are two of them and theoretically one can attack you while you're engaging the other, but by then you have the Grand Slam technique and a weapon, they spawn standing next to each other, and you can generally keep them together and keep them too stun-locked to split up.

Anyway, that's a childhood game played with adult eyes, I guess. A lot of it hasn't aged well, though it's still charming despite its (apparently more than I remembered) flaws. I'm glad I got to experience it again. I may even go through the translated Famicom version also included in the bundle just to see the differences. On the other hand, I'm also very much intrigued by the "Downtown Special Kunio-kun's Historical Period Drama!" game that's also included. It's basically River City Ransom 2, complete with a lot of quality of life adjustments that would eventually find their way into the River City Ransom EX Game Boy Advance remake (displaying the numerical amounts of damage you do, AI partners, a Defense stat that actually affects incoming damage, etc.) only set in ancient feudal Japan. If I want more River City Ransom without the rough edges, that could be a promising lead.

This one was an unexpected delight that kind of fell into our laps because it was on some absurdly big sale on the Switch eshop and like, why not I guess? And somehow grew from that to being one of our favorites this year.

Journey of the Broken Circle is a cute little indie game about a circle with a wedge-shaped piece missing (thus giving them a sort of Pac-Man-looking appearance) who feels a sense of longing due to their incompleteness. They want to find that missing piece, that thing that can make them whole, and so they set off on a journey. Lonely and depressing at first, Circle meets a cast of characters and things go from there.

This game is a very heavy-handed story about relationships. Circle is alone and lonely until they meet someone who fits in that wedge, and the two of them proceed onward together. You even gain various extra powers and abilities based on whatever your partner can do, the two of you together being maneuverable in ways that neither of you could have achieved alone. However, the funny thing about relationships is that they can be hard. Sometimes each partner has different goals--one wants to keep exploring and moving forward in life while the other wants to settle down and put down roots, for example. Sometimes these differences are irreconcilable. And sometimes Circle finds themselves alone again, hurt by the grief of having loved and lost.

Gameplay-wise, this is a platformer where your goal is to reach the end of the level. It sounds basic enough and it kind of is, but the level design does a very good job of emphasizing the narrative point of what Circle can and can't do with their partner (or lack thereof.) Each level has a few collectible mushrooms if you explore a little and go for completion, and gathering enough mushrooms unlocks a couple optional non-canon just-for-fun bonus levels. Narrative and dialogue snippets come and go as one progresses (think Thomas Was Alone) and the text is well handled as well, really selling the mood of each stage.

I'll be honest with you; I almost bounced off of this game at first. During the first one or two levels wherein Circle is alone and angsting, the narrative felt a bit too heavy-handed, and gameplay felt so basic and non-challenging that it almost seemed more like a walking sim than a platformer. There's a certain... there can be games to which we in Clan give the dreaded Indie Game About Death title in spirit even though they're not literally about death, just because they have that general aura about them (you know the one.) This is definitely one of those games, and it was a bit too much at first. But I stuck with it and... by about the second or third level, things just suddenly clicked? The platforming got a lot better--not sadistic to the point of frustration (except for the first bonus level, which fortunately is completely optional,) but there was enough there to wake me up and to sell the narrative difference between being single and in a relationship. The story and characterization got good and grabbed me, and... just... from that point on, suddenly I loved this, and that feeling only grew stronger the more we progressed.

This game is poignant, moving, and very relatable. As someone who's been there a few times, I could relate not just to the overall message but even to each specific case. From the relationship that had so much bickering toward the end that the final breakup felt inevitable and maybe even a bit of a "whew, finally" relief, to the one that seemed like it was going fine until your partner pulls the rug out from under you and leaves you feeling blindsided and betrayed, to the relationship you're wary to start at all because you've been hurt before and maybe you just need to stop trying for a while, it's all there, and it all spoke to us.

If a relationship ends badly, are all the "at least we were happy for a time, while it lasted" experiences still valid, or are the once-happy memories tainted now? This journey is just as much about learning, growing, and maturing as it is about finding that missing piece.

For a semi-basic platformer with heavy Indie Game About Relationships energy, I cannot say enough good things about this game. It snuck up on us both by being something we randomly picked up in a sale and by not really clicking until a couple stages in, but once that taste had been acquired, it was just... so good. So, so good. Please consider letting it sneak up on you, too.

(Some miscellaneous caveats:

* Content warning for suicidal ideation in some of the emotional low points.

* The second bonus stage, "The Good Trip," unlocks way, way, way too early. It features non-canonical cameos from your various companions throughout the main story, and if you're collecting every mushroom in every stage as you go, you'll have enough to unlock it before you even meet a couple of them. Playing The Good Trip as soon as you're able to is both a narrative spoiler and a gameplay pitfall as some jumps rely on your later partners' mechanics which the game hasn't even told you about yet since that's all in the main story. Consider saving The Good Trip for last. By contrast, the first bonus stage, "The Bad Trip," is fine to do at any point as soon as you unlock it, but it's also the most openly sadistic level in the game.)

This was a little thing for a game jam but because I'm bad at it, it took about an hour to complete. Was still neat.

Deepest Sword is a physics game about a knight on a quest to plunge his long, deep sword into the heart of a dragon. Alas, the dragon, who has seen many a long sword in her day, only ends up size-shaming the poor knight with "is it in yet?" type comments for the inadequate length of his tool, then roasts him and sends him back to the beginning. Your blade is enhanced, the cave on the way to the dragon gains an extra room, and you repeat the process, until at long last you have the Deepest Sword, whose length and girth are unequaled throughout the land.

This is a very intentionally subtext heavy game, is what I'm saying. (Even the dragon's expression after filling her depths is a bit... hmm.)

As far as the actual gameplay, it kind of reminds me of that Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy-inspired bonus stage in Journey of the Broken Circle, sort of. It's a physics ordeal where your controls are walk left, walk right, and rotate your sword clockwise and counterclockwise, so expect a lot of using your sword to grab ledges and lift yourself up and so on, especially as it gets longer. One thing I thought was neat was how the earlier stages change in feeling as the sword gets bigger. You have to walk from start all the way to the dragon each time you get a new sword, and each time the cave has one more section in it, but as for the ones that were there already? The physics of getting through the first few rooms with a long sword are drastically different than with a short sword; some parts that used to be the entire challenge of the room are now trivial if not entirely skippable, while parts that used to be trivial are suddenly a lot more challenging to fit that bigger sword through. Every section somehow feels like an entirely new challenge each time, which speaks to some brilliant level design when one single room just works on so many different levels.

Anyway, all that said, it is a game jam thing, so there's not too much (ahem) depth here beyond the premise: There are five sword lengths and a "you win" screen at the end, with most of the playtime coming from how long it takes you to physics your way through. Still, it's definitely worth checking out if you find the idea clever.