emBARK

9/10
This game is incredibly fun to play. It is one of those games that it can be pretty hard to get through the first couple of run throughs, but then afterwards it is just super fun to speedrun. The music and art are really epic and the mechanics are really easy to understand. Probably my favorite part of this game was the strategic use of mechanics such as the mushrooms and bones to create really enjoyable sections. All the people who made this game are absolute g's, and who ever made this banging music is bustin >:).

9/10

Disregard the other comment. This game is dope as fuck and feels like a labor of love. I love the art direction and the music is even better. Dashing around is really fun especially if you have an attention span longer than a 5-year-old and are willing to wait for the bones to regenerate after you died. The game was engaging from start to finish, and while it may not have reinvented the genre, I personally enjoyed it more than most platformers I have played this year.

3/10

Pros:

+ Cute art stile and good sprites and drawings.

Cons:

- Fabricated difficulty: because the dash is so long, the level design suffers, most if not all my deaths can be traced back to the fact i can't see what's outside the screen, and almost all the time i need to dash without the opportunity to mentally prepare or understand the situation (before dying 6 times), after my brain picked up this fact it was easy but still, the game actively suffers from the long dash in various ways.

The best way i can summarise the situation is like this: 1. oh look, there's a mush there, i hope it helps me climb, 2.  *jumps and doesn't notice the wall because is too concentrated on the mush*, 3. what? There's a wall here? And a bone? I tought there would be another platafor- 4. ded

- The game doesn't bring anything new to the table nor does it use any element that isn't in celeste.

- The music is too repetitive for it's own good.

Ok so bugs:

> Sometimes the dog may glitch while sliding on the wall and change sprites like crazy, in one iteration of this bug it will literally climb the wall by itself.

> Bones do not respawn after death.

> The dog sometimes conserves momentun while sliding into a wall (but only sometimes), that may slide you into spikes. (annoying)

> Wall sliding here is possible.