Thread is a true hidden gem. Right from the beginning, it sucked me in with its dark brooding atmosphere, excellent feeling controls, and the very intriguing puppet theming. As I progressed, the game kept giving me moments of absolute delight and surprise, and it really stuck the landing throughout.

It feels really good to play, and introduces such a unique mechanic with your accompanying scissor-spirit that helps you attack, climb, jump, and grapple. The game NAILS the SFX, with colorful reverb-heavy accents that feel impactful and make the world come alive.

The exploration is also excellent, with environmental puzzles, breakable walls, and lots of lore. It also has a great hollow knight style badge system, an inventory, and even … hats! The game is super platforming-heavy, with some really well designed sections that are BRUTAL- but fun.

I was worried about the art style, because the screenshots seemed a bit muted, but this really wasn’t an issue in the game. There’s different environments, the contrast is fine, and there’s some really great UI and other set pieces. That said, I think there could be some room for improvement on the color palette and some animations, but it really never got in the way.

If you are looking for something to hold off the silksong starvation, you could do a lot worse than Thread. It’s totally worth playing and it pushed so many buttons that too few metroidvanias are able to.