izigame.me

I played the Prologue and really enjoyed it, but then I totally forgot that the game was coming out and missed it on release. Finally got around to buying it and playing it yesterday and I was so incredibly disappointed. I really wanted to like this game. I didn't expect it to be exactly like Little Nightmares, but I was definitely drawn in by the obvious inspiration. I was trying to be open minded and not judge it against that game though. On its own, it's got cute graphics/character design, a great atmosphere, and great music... but the pros seemingly end there.
Outside of that:
Story is lacking. The overall idea of the story was good, but upon finishing the game I was just confused and incredibly disappointed.
Direction is lacking. Objectives are not always clear, and indicators are inconsistent. Sometimes you're looking for fireflies, sometimes butterflies, sometimes glowing blue, or it's red, yellow, a white streak, or in one case a green bush (why?!) was the indicator... The inconsistencies lead to confusion and needlessly being stuck in areas for way too long as a result. When everything is those colors and random non interactive objects use similar vfx, it doesn't help you figure out the priority/direction.
The buddy mechanics are frustrating and don't always work properly. From having to press the interact button multiple times to get them to do the requested action, to indicators not even showing up unless I'm standing in the perfect spot or the character is in exactly the proper place, it's incredibly frustrating when you literally rely on the buddy to do a task to move forward. Even moreso when the challenge is timing specific and their delayed walking/interaction causes you to fail over and over. This game would have definitely been better if it had the option to play co-op with a human partner instead.
Grabbing and clambering are incredibly inconsistent and sometimes require pixel perfect positioning to get them to work. Two of the most frustrating examples are the floating box in the water when you have to climb up to the ledge on the left (why not just raise the water level a smidge or make the grab area wider?), and the teeter totter with the jump pad UNDERNEATH IT (why not put the jump pad ON the teeter totter's left platform to help prevent this issue?).
So many bugs
I can ignore a minor bug here and there, some clipping/collision issues - whatever it's not a big deal. But the bugs I encountered severely impacted my ability to play, from panning the camera off nearly into space and not coming back for a whole minute, to locking my character in a grabbing pose and being unable to get out of it until mashing buttons for 30 seconds, I was growing increasingly frustrated and finding it hard to continue the game as it progressed on and the bugs became more frequent and more detrimental.
Overall the game just feels unfinished and clunky. I can't really recommend the game in its current state, but I really do hope they make more of an effort to fix at least some of these issues in the future, as it has a lot of potential.

P.S. Dear devs, PLEASE add in the ability to disable rumble on controller. Not only is it way overused in this game, but it's also incredibly buggy and has a tendency to get stuck on FULL BLAST. I had to disconnect my controller multiple times to make it stop. If you have it as a feature, you should also have the ability to disable it.