Maskmaker (2021)

A pretty neat little game. You inhabit wooden bodies by building their masks and wearing them. So basically it's got to puzzle modes: looking for the items you need to make the next mask, or doing environmental puzzles.

The environments are beautiful and varied so just walking around the different worlds inhabited by the masks is nice. The puzzles are nothing special, but they are entertaining enough.

The main selling point is the mask making, which is surprisingly engaging. At first you need to chisel out a wooden mold, and then you get a wooden mask that you can paint and stick decorations to. There's a very tangible physicality to the process that is very well realised. You put the mask on a stand that can be moved around for easy access, you grab decorations from a cabinet and stick them where they need to be. The whole thing is very well done, with very few weird physics issues.

While during the game you need to build specific masks, at the end there's a "creative mode" in which you can create masks freely. It's a neat little addition that I might have used more if the game provided more than 6 primary and secondary colours. I couldn't make anything pleasantly looking with the garish red, blue and yellow and their combinations. No blacks no white, no gray, no pink!

The only big issue with the game is that, same as the dev's previous game, A Fisherman's Tale, there's too much narration. Whether overly expository dialogue, solutions to puzzles you're in the process of solving or just pseudophilosophical nonsense about masks, the voices don't stop for a single god-damned second. There's too much telling what the game is already showing, too much bringing subtext to text, and too much bullshit filler. This developer needs to hire an editor to cut all the fat down. The writer needs to be less enamoured with their words and let the actions of the characters and the environment speak from themselves and player breath and think a bit.