Woodlings draw near!

We try to do the gameblogging awards in December; they're part of our year-end wrap-up. However, this year, a dead coyote and an even deader mental state (which I haven't gotten around to writing about yet, appropriately enough) led to that slipping. So, uh, here we are with some belated 2021 game nominees.

2021 by the numbers: 24 games completed, 1 game abandoned, and 1 ongoing, for a total of 26 gameblogging entries. This narrowly edges out 2017 (the first year we ever did this, in which we had 29) as the lowest amount of entries in the history of us doing game writeups. You would think that losing my job and getting waylaid with the kind of ADHD and executive function struggles that left me practically bedridden for months on end would have led to playing more video games, because what else was I doing all day? But, uh, apparently not.

Some of these categories are bare enough that we may as well not have them, while others still managed to have a lot of great games in contention for a highly competitive award. Which ones are which? I guess you'll have to keep reading to find out.

( Onward, at last? )

More IFComp 2021 extra credit games. The judging deadline is in a few days, so this may be the last one, actually.

You Are SpamZapper 3.1 by Leon Arnott takes a look inside the world of computers, as many of the games we played this year did. You, as you might have guessed, are SpamZapper 3.1, an email plugin tasked with screening all of your human's incoming emails and approving or zapping them.

The player character begins this tale incredibly jaded; ages of having to read brain-dead "who could possibly fall for this crap?" spam letters all day every day has brought them to the point where they hate their job and they hate people in general. This creates a bit of dissonance which is one of the things for which we have to ding this game: we ended up liking the early portion of the game a lot more than our POV character did. The "approve or deny incoming letters" mechanic is done very well. It feels interesting and is a clever and creative way to present the world of this setting. Even the obvious pointless filler spam letters are written to be amusing to read, and the way the game furthers its plot with the letters from the human's friends in between all the spam is an inventive way to handle the pacing and the drip-feeding of the game's story. It even makes what is actually a somewhat railroaded plot progression feel interactive, with all the letters to approve or deny. All in all, we were really liking this! Unfortunately, SpamZapper wasn't, and having our POV character constantly raining on our parade did feel a bit unfortunate.

Said plot is very intriguing when it picks up, as it explores the question of living and self-aware computer programs and the rules by which they must play, even as they find themselves in the role of unlikely heroes tasked with saving one of the human's closest friends from her overly controlling religious conservative father. It had quite a few moments that the other woodlings, particularly Sara, related to. The plot is gripping, intense, and... unfortunately something like three or four hours long. IFComp has a very strict rule about spending more than two hours on a game. Games longer than two hours are permissible, but only the first two hours can be reviewed. Prospective judges just stop at the two hour mark, write a review, and stick to it without changing it based on any later information. Alas, we were so engrossed with the plot that we lost track of time, missed that cutoff point, and therefore are unable to adhere to those rules without cheating. Therefore, this is another game that we are unable to score and submit.

Still, unofficially? This was outstanding. We love the story and we love the creative gameplay mechanics through which the story was told. It's a strong recommendation overall.

IFComp 2021 continues. We're officially doing extra credit games now, as this is our sixth completion out of the five minimum IFComp requires of its judges.

And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One by B.J. Best is... actually, okay, let's back up a bit.

Infinite Adventure by A. Scotts is an authentically old-timey text parser adventure. So authentically old-timey, in fact, that there's no online version and this link takes you directly to the download, which contains a file that needs to be fed into DOSBox (or whatever DOS emulator you prefer) to work. This is an actual DOS game. It's what appears to be a procedurally generated parser adventure. The player starts in a random-looking map, every room has a one or two sentence description, some also have "There is a (collectible item) on the floor" at the end, one room in particular has a gatekeeper that very blatantly and directly requests a certain item (an NPC who's hungry for food item or greedy for a treasure item, an idol that wants some kind of offering, etc.) Feed them the correct item and *** YOU WIN! *** "And then you come to a house not unlike the previous one," at which point it repeats with a newly generated level.

It's... pretty bad, actually. The rooms aren't interactive in any way except for the ones that happen to have items in them. The item collector at the end of each level blatantly tells you what it's looking for before you even have a chance to guess. Every level is a simple matter of walking around until you find the correct item and the thing that's asking for it, and it takes about two iterations of this to become mindless and repetitive.

Infinite Adventure is actually a defictionalized companion game, it turns out, and all of this is by design.

The best way to describe And Then You Come to a House Not Unlike the Previous One by B.J. Best is "What if The Neverending Story were Infinite Adventure instead of some book?" You are a kid, you are visiting your friend's house, and you are playing Infinite Adventure (along with several other games she owns) on her computer. You and your friend get bored with Infinite Adventure in universe about as quickly as we did playing the standalone file, but then things get... meta. Game characters start to show glimpses of intelligence behind the basic roles they were written. The inventory carries over between all the different games and even real life, and items from one game may be just what you need to get past a puzzle in another. Everyone seems to know more about you and your friend than random characters in computer games should.

While Infinite Adventure is intentionally bland, And Then You Come... is incredibly clever. Any story about "and then things in the computer got weird" instantly has my interest. Learning more about the relationship between you and your friend is somehow as captivating as the transdimensional weirdness, and the pacing as far as how both threads unfold while going back and forth between her game library is perfect. The challenge level was nice, as well; I briefly became stuck at one or two points, but never severely enough to need the walkthrough. (If you do need the walkthrough, though, there is one.)

Excellently presented and executed, all around. Fun to play with brilliant and intriguing framework, this (with apologies to the other parser game we reviewed this year) is how one takes the standard "go back and forth between locations, using/giving inventory items to trade for other inventory items" IF game formula and presents it as and makes it feel like something fresh and creative.

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.

I was looking for that Sonic the Hedgehog "I want shorter games with worse graphics etc." image to show to someone in a conversation, and an errant internet search pulled up a "Shorter games with worse graphics"-themed bundle on itch.io because one should never doubt the itch.io community's ability to reclaim anything in the form of naming a bundle/jam after it. I did eventually find that image, but the bundle led us to this little detour in the meantime, and I'm glad it did.

Remember Mary is a short artsy thing (this is itch.io, after all) about a girl named Mary interacting with her friends and going about her day. There are three sets of fetch quest type problems, and in each you possess the ability to solve the problem the helpful way or the fucking horrible way. For example: One of your friends lost their purse and another one of your friends has it, but won't give it back unless you find another suitable item to trade. Finding a suitable trade is definitely one way to solve the problem, which leaves both friends happy with the outcome and with you. Or, you can also get the purse back by stabbing that friend who has it to death.

Doing things the nice way always involves going a little more out of your way, and is slightly longer and more difficult. Not enough that an all-kindness run is any sort of challenge, but just enough to be very slightly obnoxious, which helps sell the feeling that you're going out of your way for these people. Gameplay to establish a mood! Very well handled and designed. The reward for doing things the long way, of course, is people thanking you for being a good and helpful friend rather than reacting with the kind of shock, disbelief, horror, and betrayal one could only feel when their dear and presumed longstanding (lifelong?) friend who has no prior history of this kind of behavior just straight up left them to die out of nowhere.

After resolving all three situations, you get one of three endings depending on whether you did the right thing in all of them, the horrible thing in all of them, or a mixture. There's a sort of... home life situation with Mary and her family that's vaguely hinted at in the kindest ending, and the curtain of what actually is going on here gets peeled back more and more in the medium and especially the pure evil paths. This is one of those five-minute-long art games, so replaying it for each ending isn't exactly a huge endeavor. In fact, there's a lot of replay value here, assuming you can stomach the lamentations of your friends if you explore the non-kind options.

Picture if Undertale were a free five minute indie walking sim instead of a full-fledged however-many hour RPG, I guess.

I did particularly like the sensation of doing one more pure-kindness run after seeing everything else, because 1) I really wanted to wash the guilty conscience down and make everyone happy again, and 2) the otherwise-vague and kind of weird kindness ending makes a lot more sense after the knowledge one gains from the other routes.

And even then, even replaying each route, we haven't seen everything. Mary starts out chipper and full of life and everyone else starts out loving and overjoyed to see their absolute favorite best friend in the world, but Mary's mood and the mood of the rest of the game darken considerably every time an evil deed is committed. Thus, the order in which you tackle every situation--whether you're still feeling fine when you encounter that purse situation or you're reeling from already having two atrocities under your belt by that point--leads to unique dialogue and conversations. (The order is far less important on an all-kindness run, as everyone's mood starts out at the same maximum brightness and just stays there throughout.) There's a part of me that really wants to go back and see the other combinations, to see what the dialogue sounds like if I ruin everything with the purse friends first or last. The dialogue is very well-written and evocative, you see, and it's very much worth seeing it all. On the other hand, because the dialogue is so well-written and evocative, I'm not sure I have the heart to explore the evil options any further than we already have.

We're fast approaching the point where it takes you longer to read this entry than it would take to play the game, being a quick little itch.io freebie and all. I guess I just had a lot to think about and a lot to say.

One last thought: I find the darker routes of this game to be an unnervingly perfect depiction of an Intrusive Thought Simulator. You know, that sensation of just hanging out with your group of dear and beloved friends and warmly enjoying each other's company, while a small part of the back of your mind is like, "Hey, I'll bet if I stabbed one of them to death right now, the other would be mortified and grief-stricken and probably hate me for what I did and the entire group dynamic we've been enjoying for decades now would just all be over all at once, just like that. Wouldn't that be fucked up?" You hate that option and you never want to take it, but it's there. As much as you want to enjoy a quick romp through a peaceful afternoon where everyone is happy to see you as you help them with a smile, that selection in the choice prompt is always there. It feels weird, almost fake or dissociative somehow, to have them praise you for your helpfulness and call you a hero and such when you know that it's there.

This game is very thought provoking. It gives me some feelings I'm not quite sure what to do with. Still, I'm glad I had the experience of chewing on them. This is itch.io at its... itchiest? itchioiest? and we are 100% here for this kind of stuff.

This was in itch.io's Racial Justice Bundle (AKA The Bundle,) which we're still slowly working on sorting through (even though The Bundle 2 for Palestinian relief efforts is now a thing, aaaa.) On the other hand, it's a short little free browser thing you can play just by going to the product page anyway, so being in The Bundle doesn't really do anything except remind you that it exists as you're sorting through Bundle pages. On the other other hand, that is an important perk, since I'd completely forgotten about it and then I saw it again and was like "oh yeah" and went and played it and actually beat it this time. So the ploy worked, I guess?

Anyway.

A Kishoutenketsu in the countryside is a short and sweet little walkaround puzzle game. There are four keys hidden in the various directions you can go from the starting point. Most of them are hidden behind some manner of block puzzle. Once you have all four, you can enter the final area, which has a nice callback mixture puzzle of all the different types of puzzles you've encountered in the four key puzzles, and then you make it to your house and have some hot chocolate and enjoy the rest of the day, the end.

Not much to say about this one, I guess. The puzzles were neat. One of the keys was really hard to find and took a hint or two from the comments before I finally got it. The end part is very satisfying. I really enjoyed this overall, and since it's like right there, there's no reason why you shouldn't too.