izigame.me

Overall, really fun and sweet collectathon inspired by the N64 era of games. Its nothing overly complex but still provided enough depth for me to want to continue playing.
Moveset for Fynn felt really nice, and I loved the unlockable moves that you'd get as you progressed. The game also takes the approach that every upgrade isn't required for a world but more upgrades will make Eggs (the main collectable) easier to get. It for the most part follows this mentality, however there are a few exceptions. For instance, if an upgrade is required to get into that world then obviously its not optional. There is one egg that seemed to require an upgrade, but out of 40 I don't think its anything to worry about. The moveset has a really nice sense of flow to it, with things like the tail swing letting you bounce and carry momentum from a roll or how the glide has two version: one that is slower but covers more ground and another that has more speed but falls faster. I adore that you can easily chain between the two version to accommodate your platforming needs.
My only real complaint, and this is more a personal thing, is that I wish there were more levels that allowed you to roll around at max speed and try chaining tail bounces together. Not that the levels we do have aren't well designed and interesting and fun to explore, because they're all a blast and all super interesting from one another. The Eggs are hidden behind both platforming challenges and puzzles, and the game does a good job at keeping things very fresh between worlds. There are a few puzzles that might get you scratching your head, but they're fairly few and far between.
The game isn't super long either. My 100% playthrough took around 5 hours without using a guide for most of it (ended up using a guide to get 4 optional collectables since I only had 4 left).
I don't really make a point to talk about graphics when I review games because I feel that art is subjective, but I wanna emphasize how much I loved this game's graphics and aesthetics. Of course the influence from the N64/PS1 era of games is apparent and does create very cozy and whimsical atmospheres. However, I was surprised at how unnerved I was in some of the late-game areas. The aesthetics became somewhat spine tingling and made me somewhat uncomfortable to a point where I was getting that "I need to get out of here" feeling. Even small things like Fynn's eyes becoming sad in these areas was enough to kinda frighten me. At times it felt like I was kinda playing a horror game, but don't worry theres no jumpscares or anything like that here if what I said was turning you off.
As far as issues go, I didn't really find much that would ruin a person's experience. Some of the sound-mixing was off with certain sound effects sounding way louder than the music or other sfx. Some of the menus also didn't function properly at first, I wasn't able to check the other pages of the encyclopedia or the checklist and had to use my keyboard to change pages. Not having the checklist seemed like it might of stung but it was hardly any issue since everything on the second page was pretty easy to find/assume how many of each item there was. If I could suggest an improvement, it'd be that the first person camera mode should angle Fynn in the direction they're facing so you can use it as a repositioning tool.
All in all, really fun game! I had a blast with it and loved basically everything about it. I'd love to see some sort of follow-up that expands on the moveset and such. Maybe not a Cavern of Dream 2 (unless the Developer is willing) per say, but something that uses it as a base and builds off of it. Was a lot of fun!