Well I am slowly losing my grasp on my “anti-fantasy themes” opinion on games. This is now one of like 5 fantasy themed HOPA’s that I’ve really enjoyed, but honestly it might be my favorite. It is made by MagicIndie Softworks, their final swan song game after making the incredible game Brink of Consciousness: Dorian Gray Syndrome (which is also a total favorite of mine). That one delved into the complete opposite type of subject matter than this: a clever Saw-like serial killer who traps you in his mansion.

But honestly? I liked this one almost just as much. I did not enjoy their sequel to Dorian Gray, which was just way too dialogue heavy for my liking.

But this one has the exact same gameplay I loved from that game: a giant interconnected world, with constant back-and-forth pathing and really fun puzzles. I have played games where the open-ended map was TOO much, but this is literally perfect. You constantly get rewarded with checkpoints which finish off a big chunk of rooms, which is the type of bottleneck design that I love.

The map is also perfect, as it only marks which rooms still have things to do but doesn’t tell you which ones to go to NOW. But the other thing that makes this game remarkable is the artwork. It is just gorgeous, all hand-painted with a masterful use of color and texture.

Unfortunately the devs never made another game, as is usual: the most high quality devs in the HOPA space get crowded out by the mass production asset recycling that the large studios use to push out multiple games per quarter. But if you can dig up the dev teams that had a lightning in a bottle moment, it is absolutely worth it.